My Way

by junior-wheel

She would be a hero if only they let her have her way. Helping Link save Hyrule is a demeaning task, but even between shadow beasts and the princess's lack of faith, an infuriatingly charming chosen one makes Maeva no longer quite so certain of herself.

6. Falling through the cracks

It has been too long, and I apologize. I've actually had most of this chapter ready to publish since February, but I was too lazy to edit and some parts had me seriously stumped. I just finished this a few weeks ago and did some editing yesterday. I still want to finish this! It's just very difficult sometimes.

If my old readers are still out there, welcome back! If you're new, welcome! And thanks for reading My Way this far. Very cool of you. In this chapter, we go to boring old Lakebed Temple and see some interaction with one of our big bads, Zant, Douchebag Extraordinaire (D.E.).

Man, did I hate Lakebed Temple. But I loved it, too. Both because of the background music. It was so darn creepy! But I loved how the water looked. I still hate writing about dungeons, though. And what does D.E. have in store for our favorite party? (They're more like the only party traveling the lands. You think at least some groups would be tired of waiting for Zant to crack down on them cruelly and leave instead of just twiddling their thumbs where they live and getting attacked by King Bulblin, right? Nope.)

Now, enjoy!

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My Way

Chapter 6: Falling through the cracks

Ooccoo's red eyes narrowed. "Are you certain about this, dear?"

"Sure," was Link's pleasant reply. His smile had already placated the oocca's doubts, but he felt it only right to explain further. "Water doesn't seep into the Pocket when I swim, so you should both be safe. Are you ready, Maev—?"

Gale blew a heavy gust of wind his way. "Don't look!"

Link yelped at the wisps of his bangs that suddenly pricked at his eyes, but brushed them away in apology as he turned his head. "Sorry, sorry…"

Arms crossed over her chest, Midna sighed dramatically, finger tapping impatiently on her elbow. "If you'd just donned this suit in the Inn, we wouldn't be having this problem. See, Link, sometimes it's all right to take charge and tell her these things."

Ooccoo and Gale exchanged glances – at least, they would have, if the boomerang possessed eyes – but said nothing, emulating the wisely silent example of their human companions.

To Maeva's surprise, Malo had looked much more natural walking. The tranquility of the Zora graveyard was better appreciated under the sunlight and gave their infant friend a mind equipped with the proper inspiration to aid them in their search for a shortcut to Lake Hylia. Maeva had mourned the apparent lack of caverns in the graveyard's lake with a grunt, impatient for the last piece of the Fused Shadow. They would take another day to reach the Lanayru province without distractions.

Malo only scoffed, however, and procured a water bomb he'd purchased from Barnes the night previous from somewhere beneath his jerkin. Light me a fire, he'd said, and Maeva obeyed, drawing from her time roasting small animals hunted on the field; then Malo dropped it near a boulder below the bank. The water above followed the direction of a northern whirlpool, but the lake wasn't drained of its contents. Giving the slightest hint of a smile, the infant said, "I won't even charge you for that – call it my contribution to saving Hyrule." At Maeva's shocked expression, he only shrugged.

"Why do humans wear clothes, anyway?" asked Ooccoo Junior, spinning in the air before Link.

"Humans don't have feathers to keep them warm, dear," answered his mother. "And I suppose one might say it is simply a matter of culture."

Maeva cleared her throat. "I'm finished."

Covered in thick warrior scales over soft yet hardy material even Malo couldn't name, the Zora armor hugged the body, revealing curves that Maeva's daily wear did not often emphasize. If Link wore the Hero's Clothes, Maeva's uniform of sorts normally consisted of a loose dark shirt that stopped some ways below her bust and gave way to dark markings twisted around a tiny bellybutton – at least, when her arms and stomach were not swathed in bandages, harem pants that hung low on her waist and were clasped in by cloth strips on the ankles, and sandals that she must have picked up on her journey, for they looked completely out of place.

Her thighs were nicely toned, though it shouldn't have been a shock given her mentioned experience outdoors. It was curious, how long she must have traveled on her own after Zant ruined all that was dear to her.

"Link!" Maeva snapped him out of his trance. Her eyebrows furrowed when he met her gaze. "I should think a Hero would be more attentive…Did you hear a word I said?"

"Ah—I'm sorry, Maeva," he said, his small smile concealing his relief. Motioning to the flappers resembling Zora feet, Link asked, "You want help with the boots?"

"I'm fine," she muttered, tossing him her clothes to keep in the Pocket. Her bracelet remained.

Gale spun around Maeva, taking the armor in full view. "How does it feel?"

"Like it fits," she answered. When their companions were inside the Pocket, she spoke again, touching the base of her abdomen. "It's very light."

Link wasn't certain if she addressed him, so he overlooked it. "Ready?" he asked, putting on the Zora helm.

"Any minute now," Midna singsonged.

Nodding, Maeva dove into the water. Her eyes felt glassy quickly, and she wondered if it was the foreign liquid getting inside them and causing some sort of infection – but she dipped her head inside and found that she could see perfectly clearly, that the sensation protected her vision. She swam closer to the cavern entrance. From within the armor, a black cloth, smooth like brand new castle carpeting pulled over her mouth and nose to regulate her breathing.

Link slipped into the lake with an arm outstretched. Maeva was so happy at her newfound though temporary ability to swim that she reached back, until something tugged uncomfortably at her feet. It was the whirlpool, swallowing her into its currents and whisking her away.

Her head bobbed up to the surface minutes later. The black cloth folded into itself automatically, and as she recognized Fyer's purple cannon-house, Maeva released the cheer she'd sucked in at the exciting sensation elicited by the strong liquid flurry.

"Wow," came Link's breathless voice. He was behind her, but she could hear the grin in his tone. "I never thought you might be a thrill-seeker, Maeva."

Maeva blinked. "I was only…I'm not some kind of – truant – no…"

Protected by her shadows, Midna swirled above them from the water. "Time to get the last piece!" she said, clapping her hands with a slight giggle. "Let's get a move on!"

"Right," said Link, and found after he granted himself another second to rest that his companion had already swum deeper into Lake Hylia. What had she been trying to say? Had she actually been – flustered?

The Lakebed Temple's name was not at all misleading – it lay at the bottom of the lake where the light could hardly reach it. One Zora floated guard beside the entrance while another swam the perimeter, spear in hand. Link couldn't be sure, but they might have been the people he spotted as a wolf. The strangers in the distance warned them to take their places right beside the temple door.

He wasn't sure whether Maeva had waited for him before speaking with them out of mutual respect or fear, but Link was pleased. When he floated next to her, he spoke clearly through the Zora visor, "Greetings. We were sent here—"

"No need for formalities," said the Zora to the left, without the spear. He gave a slight, uncertain smile. "You wear the armor crafted by our honored King. Know simply that…we have never ventured past this door."

"They say all manner of horrors lie deep inside the temple," said the second Zora. He was obviously younger, given his still earnest tone. "Have a care."

Maeva didn't return his inquisitive glance, staring intently at the door, so Link pressed on. "Thank you."

Maeva reveled in the feel of the Zora armor. To be a monarch and wield such magic, to be such a skilled craftsman; how could the Zora king have died, especially before events when his guidance would certainly be needed? In the end, she thought melancholically, his power hadn't been enough to protect his people from his own death. Still, to weave the traits of his people within a single suit of armor! She thought she might feel unwieldy inside it, the only armor she'd ever worn having been the metal braces around her neck and ankles to bind her Nine uniform, but this felt like a second skin, and sometimes not even that.

At times it was as though she wore nothing at all, to the point that she felt embarrassed, naked in the times Link looked at her, but Maeva knew she was being ridiculous. In any case, there were much more dangerous things inside the temple than people – as soon as they entered, the deep dive and eventual rise of the tunnel took them past enormous monster clams and transluscent, glowing beings with heads shaped like mushrooms and tentacles that lit the tunnel path.

Maeva paddled as fast as she could away from the monsters – who'd snapped their jaws or slung their tentacles at them upon sight – and breathed in relief when she climbed out of the circular pool into a wide natural cavern, not unlike those of Death Mountain's, but with stalactites and stalagmites and a more pleasant smell than sulfur creeping at her senses. Up ahead was a door covered in tiles of porcelain, and out of her sight, a lever whose handle shone like gold. (Upon closer inspection by Ooccoo Junior, later, they would discover it was only fool's gold.)

"That was close," said Link, lifting the visor when he rushed out after her, but he was grinning – as though he found the experience of almost-death exciting. "Those Zora weren't kidding. I never imagined those Bari could be so…huge!"

"It must be the influence of the Fused Shadow, but one wonders how long that must have been here. Did they truly build a temple only to seal away the one piece?" When Link simply stared at her, she supposed he wouldn't know, either. The Hero's Clothes only granted him protection; not knowledge. "Are there such monsters in your Ordon Lake?"

"No, never," Link answered, as though the very idea made him want to cringe. "My mother read me books about them when I was younger. Didn't yours?" And then he actually cringed, and looked like he expected her to hit him.

Maeva didn't understand his apprehension and felt panic. Did he know about her parents? He couldn't have; Midna would never tell him no matter how angry she was…would she? "Of course my mother read to me of monsters," she answered testily. "Only, of a different kind."

"Right," Link nodded. "Sorry, Maeva. It was dumb of me to bring it up."

"What in the world are you apologizing for?" Maeva frowned.

"Well—" Link paused. It crossed his mind several times to breach the subject of her parents, but he doubted she would open her heart to him.

If he decided to ask, he was cut short by Midna's appearance. "If you're going to talk, do it when there are no monsters around! Watch out!"

By reflex, Maeva switched out her staff and shoved Link aside, hurling her weapon at something squirming behind him. It was a translucent, dark violet blob of something that she hacked in half. If her eyes served her correctly, the staff had only created more of whatever it was that leapt at them. Their movement identified them to her as worms of some sort, made of gel, and Maeva jumped over the halves as they lunged at her in a swift, singular motion.

Maeva picked up her staff, preparing in her mind how she would slash through the gel without making more, when one of the halves sucked at the webbed padding on her feet. It seemed to eat at the material of the Zora armor, giving her a sensation reminiscent of being absorbed by a portal – disintegrated piece by piece, only to be put together again – though she doubted the existence of the latter function in this monster.

"There's something inside!" she heard Link's voice outside the space on which her senses had narrowed down, containing only her and the gel halves. "That's it, Maeva!"

Maeva saw it: a sphere of wrinkled mass and black points floating about that could have been a brain, eye, or both. The crystalline end of her staff pierced through the halves into the mass, both of which dissipated into them like air bubbles.

Crouched before the gel on his side, Link looked confused. "What was that?"

"Was that not part of your storybooks?"

"Definitely not," said Link, Pocket wriggling. "The rock I threw at it just – dissolved."

Maeva quirked an eyebrow. "You threw…a rock at it?"

Link nodded, smiling as though it had been the only logical course of action, and opened the Pocket. "My sword hacked it through, making two smaller monsters, like your staff did. Other objects, though…just disintegrated into its gelatinous form. I've never heard of anything like it before."

"Oh! Yum!" Ooccoo Junior exclaimed, flitting into the air. Link and Maeva had barely noticed him when he dove right into the gel corpses – if they could be called such.

"No!" his human companions shouted, eyes wide, but the young oocca was all smiles as he rolled about, chirping happily before devouring the violet gel.

Mouth agape, Maeva watched in horror. Link agreed, "…That's not very hygienic, Junior. Not to mention it disintegrated rocks."

"Oh, no, it's not a problem, dears," Ooccoo laughed, lowering her neck and sniffing the gel. "That was a Chu, wasn't it? As it dies, its brain secrets an enzyme that alters the chemical composition of its body into something like your Red Potion there, Link. Very convenient. I might say the yellow ones are unhealthy, however – they serve as something like oil."

Even Link appeared dumbfounded. "Oh. I see."

"I don't," said Maeva. "How did you know that?"

"It's general knowledge in our home!" said Ooccoo. "Why, even little Junior knows it. They are a common element in our storybooks."

Although she looked back on her childhood with a heavy, aching heart, she knew she'd been happy then. That her companions should have their own pasts long before meeting her often slipped her mind, and she was curious to know what theirs entailed, even if Link seemed apprehensive towards speaking of it. Had something terrible happened to him, she wondered? He and Fado seemed to have no parents in the village, after all, contrary to the rest. But he offered no information as to his lineage, and she wouldn't press the subject. He might think she was interested…in him! "Gale, what did your mother read to you as a child?"

"Me?" A breeze circled the room as Gale thought. Absentmindedly, she replied, "I haven't been a child for quite some time…" And with fondness in her voice, "My mother used to tell me stories of the Hero who saved Ancient Hyrule."

"The Hero?" asked Maeva.

"Yes! The very man…or boy, I suppose, at the time, who wore those same garments," said Gale, spinning round Link. "Although they hadn't been enchanted to perfection by the Light Spirits then."

Flicking off a string of seaweed he noticed on his boot, Link said, "I only know the gist of it. You have details, Gale?"

"Oh, yes." She sounded extremely happy to be talking of it, too. "My people have lived for ages. The times have changed and we've chosen to stay out of most of the world's affairs…but we remember the time when we didn't, and…"

"I'd like to hear about such an era," said Maeva, who couldn't imagine it for herself. Then again, until Zant's betrayal, she hadn't heard of the Zora kingdom or the Goron tribes. They seemed a simple, if not content, people, so they mustn't have participated in what Zelda called the Interloper War.

"We have stories, too!" announced Ooccoo Junior, flitting between the two. "About our city! In the sky!"

"A city in the sky?" Link repeated with amazement. "But, hey, I guess I shouldn't be surprised."

"Once we find that Rod, we'll be able to show you, dear!" Ooccoo added, sharing her son's excitement. "But enough about that – adventure awaits! Shouldn't we get to finding the Fused Shadow?"

A giggle escaped Link's shadow. "I'm glad someone remembers…!"

"Yes," said Maeva, firmly, her casual tone disappearing. "Ooccoo is…correct. Shall we?"

Ooccoo Junior, oblivious once more to the tension skirting the fringes of their team set-up, nodded his body up and down. "Where are we going?"

The way was fairly linear, which the young oocca learned soon enough. He rushed at the lone porcelain door; it only chipped at his efforts. Maeva had watched Ooccoo for the duration of this attempt with a peculiar expression, expecting the chatty woman to intervene, to tell Link to tell her son to stop that this instant, but she only cheered and took him under her wing when he gave up. His disappointment was short-lived, however, as he found the shiny lever hiding behind the stalactites and simply pulled it down. Maeva still wondered at such strength, but said nothing when Link didn't.

A natural bridge hung from their door to a great stone arch formed by the wall across, their only source of light a few lamps lit high above. The mound formations below were littered with beasts wearing spotted metal shells on their backs, but they were too far below to notice and, if Maeva was asked for her opinion, she was glad not to have to discover their level of hostility, in any case. When they emerged from under the arch, it was as if the world had shifted into a completely different setting. The bridge was a construct, now, ancient symbols intertwined with its railings; the wall behind was covered in mosses, the door across in bright blue porcelain, and the sound of the current belonging to a full river below breathed life into the temple.

But it was nothing compared to the next room they reached by way of another lever. In fact, it wasn't a room but a series of three levels, floors all made of porcelain, and a flight of stairs at its center, slowly spinning round a vertical axis. Maeva peered up from their floor – the second – and searched for the sky, but saw only crystals expertly crafted into a single chandelier hanging on pearls, showering icy blue light into the area.

"Imagine," said Link, breathlessly, "This…it's even deeper than Lake Hylia. If...if the world knew about historical treasure places like this possess…"

Maeva broke out of her own reverie with a frown. "They would be consumed by greed, and many things will come to ruin from their efforts." Link paused, and she didn't like the look he gave her. Not because it irritated her, but because she felt almost embarrassed for having uttered such words. "What is it?" she demanded defensively. "Lanayru had said much the same thing, of that power granted by the goddesses. Now kingdoms seek knowledge, and there is much to gain from the past. Perhaps Zelda will remain steadfast in her earnest, but others…"

Link shook his head. "I think, maybe, it won't happen so swiftly…but maybe you're right." He looked almost disappointed saying it. "Anyway, we're the only humans able to access this place. So it'll be our secret."

Our secret replayed in Maeva's mind many times, and she found that she didn't quite mind it as she thought she might have, many days ago.

"Right, guys?" asked Link, now grinning. He was that Steadfast Hero again. Maeva took some comfort from it; so they hadn't completely lost him to Ilia, after all.

"Of course!" said Ooccoo.

"Yeah!" Ooccoo Junior cheered. "That's what being an adventurer is all about. Going places no others have gone before!"

At that, Maeva thought she felt very fortunate to have gone on an adventure there, and in their company, no less, until she was reminded by the shadows dancing on Link's feet that it wasn't luck that had brought her to Lakebed Temple but her own doing. And she felt ungrateful, that she should live when Seven of the Nine had not, when their people were trapped in hideous forms they could not control while she complained of markings that were little compared to theirs, but guilt was tiring…and her plight was her own, wasn't it? The question felt right to her, and yet wrong, and she was confused.

The headache gave her a jolt, an acute awareness of their surroundings. To be certain, the Lakebed Temple was a wonder, but its tranquility carried an eeriness she couldn't place. The sound of dripping water suddenly seemed to haunt her, as though they were footsteps of heroes long past, asking to be followed. Or perhaps, and it must have been the more plausible explanation because she grasped at it desperately as soon as it came to mind, it was only from the workings of her foolish imagination.

She was overwhelmed by the number of doors she could see from their level, and they had no idea which to enter first. In the Goron Mines, at least, they were guided by the task of searching for the key fragments to Darbus' prison chambers. When she could come to no decision, she found herself looking to Link, who was watching her quietly.

"What?"

"Nothing," he said, still pleasantly, but his swift about-face gave her pause. It was almost awkward. Had he been like this when they first met? All Maeva had seen then were his smiles and eagerness to aid them for no reason at all that she couldn't call to mind anything that might have indicated a character that entailed this.

It's no good to dwell on something incomprehensible, Rell had once said to her. Save the contemplation for a less hostile environment, too, and she couldn't have been more right as Ooccoo's screaming echoed throughout the temple walls. Link and Maeva darted to her rescue – or Ooccoo Junior's, as it was he who'd rushed off and encountered a monster – but Gale had already done away with it, thrashing it about with her furious winds.

The monster resembled one they encountered in the Goron Mines, the stick-legged, one-eyed thing that had leapt out of the water for Ooccoo Junior. It was curious, thought Maeva, that those same species were found in enclosed spaces like the Goron Mines and the Lakebed Temple, the latter of which had been sealed off for what must have been hundreds of years, but she could find no connection between them.

Just as it was Ooccoo Junior that broke her from her silly retrospection, it was he who decided where they would begin. Levers hung from many sides of each floor, and their purpose was to move the spinning staircase to their level whenever pulled. Their party traversed through varying rooms across floors, some consisting of pools filled with rupees guarded by monsters, many of waterwheels that seemed to regulate the flow of water within the entire temple, and others of dark blue gears, unmoving, but at once constantly shifting when Ooccoo Junior took pleasure in finding their corresponding levers, but none contained clues as to the location of the Fused Shadow fragment.

One of the gears brought them to a place lacking the ornate designs making up most of the Temple. It was a cylindrical area with stone walls, the spareness reminiscent of the entrance, and mounds of rock piled around together at the bottom. Maeva felt great displeasure at finding a dead end; as though their search hadn't been fruitless enough.

"Those must have been shaped by water," said Ooccoo, watching Link and Maeva move forward.

"If there was any," snorted Maeva. As it was, there remained only puddles. "This place must be very old. I wonder why they overlooked it."

"No…" Link glanced about with a thoughtful expression. "The puddles haven't dried out. It must be recent, but where could the water have come—"

"Look, everyone! A lever," Ooccoo Junior declared happily. Even his mother granted him only an accommodating smile; she, too, tried to solve the puzzle of the room. Perhaps its simplicity had been a clue, however, as to the answer they couldn't determine. So deep in thought were they that they only noticed, belatedly, that the floors had begun to shake.

"Can you feel that?" asked Maeva, looking first to Ooccoo and Gale by the door, and then to Link beside her. "I think it's coming from the—"

"Whoa!" Link's arm shot out from his side and swept up the entirety of Maeva's as the rock beneath his feet rose swiftly to the air. "What—what's happening?"

It took a moment for Maeva to gather her wits and stop screaming about her arm and the fact that she was hanging from a height from which she would surely perish. When she recovered, she saw beneath the mound water so powerful that it bubbled a glistening white. "It's a – a geyser," she answered. "Don't let go!"

"I won't this time!" Link promised, but the rock rose and fell, unstable, and he hadn't the balance to pull her to himself.

"Maeva, coming your way!" Gale shouted from below.

"Wha—!" The rock beneath her shot through the air, making painful impact with her knees and tearing her abruptly from Link's grasp. Her geyser kept her above him as she clasped her hands about the rock for dear life, devising a way to reach the ground – many of the stepping stones were now springing from the ground – when the largest, almost rectangular mound in the center of the area darted through the air next to her, the rushing water beneath it spraying at her face.

Between wiping her eyes and mouth she saw something green moving atop it – Link, waving at her with an apologetic grin. She watched him rise to the very top and then jump onto a structure near the ceiling – a hanging bridge completed by the missing rectangle, not totally unlike Dangoro's circular platform from the Goron Mines.

"Guys!" he shouted, peering from the edge, his voice ricocheting as Maeva found her geyser's rhythm, "Hop on the big one!"

Just as Maeva had begun to jump from one small stone to another, Ooccoo Junior appeared beside her. "Time to go, Maeva," he said and, smiling toothily, flew around her thrice.

She landed on something soft with a thud. The ground beneath her groaned, and with a yelp, Maeva rolled off.

"Oh, sorry, Link!" said Ooccoo Junior, sitting on his shoulder as he sat up. "I thought you were standing by the door."

"It's all right, Junior," he said, holding his stomach with a painful smile. Maeva felt some embarrassment – she wasn't that heavy, was she? – but only sighed in relief, pretending not to have noticed. Link dismissed it without a thought. "Wow. And I thought I'd seen everything in Death Mountain."

Maeva was about to nod in agreement when she caught sight of Link's shadow, shifting uncomfortably. "We should move."

The next area was no smaller than the last, and the party found themselves in the middle of a spiraling path, torches lighting the walls. Looking off the railings, Maeva saw stillwater sitting beneath, and a porcelain door to the left.

"What's down there?" asked Link, whose eyes couldn't catch objects that far below.

"Only a…I don't know," Maeva replied, shrugging and stepping away from the edge. "But we should make our way there."

"Let's go up first," said Link, "You know, to cover all the bases."

"But—"

"Link is right," said Ooccoo. "I smell treasure upstairs!"

"Me too!" declared her son.

"Very well," muttered Maeva, and Ooccoo Junior led the way with Gale at his side.

No door waited for them at the top of the room; only a dry floodgate and a lever before that. Maeva thought there was a ridiculous amount of them in this Temple, but who was she to question ancient cultures? She wouldn't complain, especially given the rupees they had collected, and the treasure chest that sat between the gate and Ooccoo's current object of affection.

While she contemplated what might be inside it, Link peered out of the glass ceiling, into the darkness.

"This was one of the minarets we saw outside, when we were swimming here," he breathed.

"Interesting!" said Midna, briefly hopping out of his shadow. "Maeva should pay attention to these things, so she isn't lost all the time. Don't you think so?" she giggled, but to Maeva, crouched before her the treasure chest, it felt forced. She knew they were both anxious to find that last piece.

Link opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off by a rumbling from behind the floodgate. Alarmed, he turned his head to Ooccoo Junior, who'd already pulled down the lever. As soon as the gate lifted, water roared and crashed into the room, sweeping them off their feet and carrying them down the path they had just taken. Maeva focused the last of her balance into taking the chest into her arms before allowing herself to fall down.

Maeva was carefree for a moment, laughing at the sensation of falling with a certain degree of surety, and briefly stole a vision of Link, who hooted with an ear-to-ear smile, gathering the rest of their companions to himself before returning her glance. They looked away at the same time to meet the pit below, the black cloth in the Zora armor uncurling to cover Maeva's nose and Link's visor falling swiftly down his mouth before they could inhale water.

"That was so fun!" Ooccoo Junior cheered after taking a breath, flapping his wings in the water to stay afloat. "Let's do it again!"

"Wait…" A familiar tug at Link's feet caused him to start and the smile on his face to waver. He The water continued to swirl, forming an eddy that appeared to drain at the center of the room. "It isn't over. Swim ashore!" Link shouted, but it was too late. Maeva hardly resisted the vacuum taking them into the unknown below.

In contrast to the blue hues of the Temple, Maeva opened her eyes to a vast yellow chamber. It, too, was empty, save for cavities in the wall that revealed no exits. The gate at one end was barred shut, and the only thing Ooccoo Junior could find that came close to a lever was a small latch in the ceiling above it. He couldn't quite fit his body into it enough to push it down, nor could he wrap his mouth around the handle to pull.

Ooccoo Junior returned to Maeva's palm, jaw slacked from fatigue. "I don't think I can open that gate…" he mumbled.

"It's all right," she said, stroking his cheek with a finger. "It shouldn't be left to you."

"Come here, dear," Ooccoo beckoned. Maeva placed him on his mother's back, where he lay nestled in her feathers.

"I could teleport us upstairs again," Junior mumbled.

"No need," said Link. "We can find a way to open this... You've done a good job so far, Junior. Rest first."

Maeva glanced at Link and Gale, who were inspecting the gate, attempting to blow it away and hack at it, and caught sight of her treasure chest. Giving an exclamation of joy, she jogged to approach it – and then a bumpy, fat, pink tendril uncurled from the ceiling and snapped it up.

"My treasure…"

Link turned at the sound of Maeva's soft tone and had little time to react as an enormous blob fell to the ground before her. "Well. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised at this, either," he muttered.

The blob turned from its back onto its stomach, little arms supporting itself, and Link recognized a toad the size of Sera's house. Slimy and varying shades of putrid green with pink lips as thick as the fat perched over its tiny yellow eyes, and larger ones peering out from its back, the Deku Toad opened its mouth and reached for Maeva with its tongue – the pink tendril she'd seen earlier.

"Maeva, move!" Link yelled, but she'd darted off even before his command reached her ears. Scrambling to her feet, Maeva slicked her wet hair back and ran for her companions. Upon Link's command, Ooccoo flew to the safety of the upper wall cavities, face even more unsightly as she made an expression of disgust.

"I could shoot it," said Maeva, but hesitated to reach for the Bow. As in the Forest Temple, everything here seemed to be hostile. Perhaps it was the influence of the Fused Shadow or her upbringing in a generally peaceful society, but fighting these monsters was beginning to grow tiresome – not that she would ever surrender; not while Midna remained in exile. And no hero ever became such by sitting out on battles! For now, for Midna, war would be her way.

There was a growing suspicion in Maeva's mind that the Deku Toad could read her thoughts, because as she drew an arrow against the Bow, it seemed to disappear. Taking its place was a school of plump fish as wide as Link's hand and as long as her forearm, making nasty chomping sounds as they made for the intruders.

"Ugh!" Maeva speared at them with her staff. "Where did these come from?"

Swinging his blade at the carnivorous creatures, Link pointed to the where the toad once stood. "Its back – they weren't eyes, they were fish!"

"Let me help!" Ooccoo Junior cried, appearing between them and bursting with energy. Link and Maeva moved to protest, but the boy lowered himself to the water and seized at the fish, taking one bloody bite from each and moving on swiftly.

"Amazing," said Maeva, watching the little fish retreat from the even smaller creature, but Link's grip on his sword only tightened.

"Wait. Where did the toad go?"

"Look to the shadows!" Midna shouted from Link's feet. Above, the Deku Toad jumped from a great stalactite and spread its arms, ready for a belly flop over Maeva, who ran opposite Link's direction. Both were thrown off their feet by its impact on the shallow water. Rising, Maeva had little time to aim for the toad as more fish snapped their teeth at her shins. She found herself backed against the wall as she waded away and fired arrows. Ooccoo and Gale's screams reached her from somewhere in the background.

Or above her, when she focused on their shrill voices, and saw Gale spinning out of the cavity towards the Deku Toad. Ridding herself of the last fish in the batch, Maeva followed to find the toad's thick tongue wrapped around Link's body. Gale hurled gusts at the toad, screaming in various ear-splitting pitches, but that didn't stop the monster from lambasting a shouting Link around the water with its tongue.

"What?" Maeva yelled over the winds heaving her hair in all directions, trying to approach the Deku Toad without getting in the way of its tongue or being completely whisked away by Gale's attacks.

"The bombs! Toss me a bomb!"

"Aren't they in your Pocket? And I can shoot this!" Maeva exclaimed, aiming an arrow for the toad's throat, but its tongue and Link swished about too wildly for her to get a proper view of her target. "If you could only – stop moving!"

"Maeva, I don't think now is really the time to argue with me!"

"I'm hardly arguing—ow! Hold on!" More fish had arrived, nipping at her calves. To her shock, a bomb was making its way to her in the water, attacking the fish on its own. When she bent down to pick it up, it rose to meet her instead.

Balancing an explosive on his head, Ooccoo Junior grinned, lower lip dripping with fish blood. Maeva would have been terrified if she wasn't so glad to see him safe. "Here's a bomb, Maeva," he said helpfully, "Link dropped his Pocket before the Toad got him! I'll get more when—"

Link was swept past them. "Maeva!"

"All right, all right!" Taking a match from her own pouch and lighting the fuse over their young companion's eyes, she ushered him off. "Take it to Link—hurry!"

Ooccoo Junior was only too happy to participate in the battle to fear the bomb ready to blow and took it to Link, following the edge of the Deku Toad's tongue. With a frustrated yet pleasant shout, the hero ordered the boy to toss the weapon into its mouth and fly back to his mother. Maeva thought the toad must be accustomed to gulping down all kinds of things by accident, because it gave no reaction to the little sphere it swallowed.

Link, however, yelped in urgency, and in a desperate move for freedom, he opened his mouth, teeth gleaming – of course the Hero possessed pearly whites – and bit down on the Deku Toad's tongue.

Link coughed and hacked as the tongue released him, but pulled himself to his feet and ran towards Maeva as soon as he could, flailing his arms. "Get out of the way!" He shouted up at Gale, "To Ooccoo, now!"

There were five seconds of total chaos as the Deku Toad screeched in pain, Gale's tempests continued to whip at them and Ooccoo continued to scream, and then the toad exploded, innards and slime flying in all the chamber's directions. Silence. Her mind recalled the familiarity of the situation to an occurrence in the Forest Temple – only, instead of shadows protecting her, it was Link.

Why did he shield her, when she had no real need of his body? Maeva should have felt insulted, but perhaps the days and nights spent with him had already made Link's actions perfunctory to her. It was his way to take responsibility for many things; she only resented it because it should have been hers.

When all was quiet and Ooccoo was calm, Link removed himself from her and the wall. "Are you all right?" he asked. It may as well have been the first time he asked her thus, because this was the first she'd ever looked into his eyes as he said the words. Genuine concern flashed across the blue, and all the indignance she felt at his body pressed against hers dissipated.

Maeva wondered if he'd always possessed a gaze that seemed to engulf her entirely. Midna had once looked upon her with the same care, and the Nine, perhaps, as well as her parents, but his affected her differently, in a way she couldn't place. She clutched the armor crafted by the Zora king; didn't Queen Rutela promise it wouldn't let her drown? "Maeva?"

"Obviously!" she yelped when she came to her senses. When Link blinked, stepping away and giving her an almost odd expression, Maeva cleared her throat. "Obviously I'm all – all right. You can see that. Although," she added, forcing a smirk, "you may have toad entrails smeared on your back."

"Oh, that's fine," Link grinned, crouching, and applied the last of the clear water surrounding them to wipe the smudge from his clothes and shield, though much of the stench remained. "I'll wash it off later," he shrugged, and then wrinkled his nose, sticking out his tongue.

Maeva didn't know it, but her face mirrored his grimace. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing, I just—"

"Oh, you bit the toad," Maeva recalled with a chortle. "That can't be healthy."

Link might have been offended if her unguarded smile wasn't so rare. Although it was at his expense, he only returned it with a sheepish chuckle. "Probably not, huh?"

"This is no laughing matter, Link!" said Ooccoo, fluttering down on his head. "Maeva, do you have a clean piece of cloth he might use?"

"I have some excess bandages, I think," she mumbled, reaching into her pouch, but Link waved his hands vigorously in refusal.

"S'fine, it's fine," he said, taking a handkerchief from his Pocket, which Ooccoo Junior presented proudly. "I have my own."

While Link wiped his tongue on an old blue handkerchief, whorls of shadow rose from the water to form Midna, arms akimbo. "So you've gotten rid of that pest. Maybe it's time to get going?" she suggested. In the Twili tongue, she said to Maeva, "You're certainly taking your sweet time. Is it this form, or have you simply turned your back on the shadows already?"

The girl clenched her fists. "I can assure you that I haven't."

She received only laughter for her stern expression. "We'll see!"

Shrugging off the imp, Maeva stalked off, but her dark mood disappeared as soon as she saw her treasure chest among the blobs of Deku Toad innards. The monster had slobbered all over it and Link's plan had covered it in black entrails, but she remained anxious to see its contents. Gingerly pressing it open, Maeva's eyes widened – and then her eyebrows furrowed, her hands lifting the obect into the air. A metal claw with a chain wrapped around its wooden base.

"Hey, what's that?" asked Link, handkerchief gone when he stood next to her.

It wasn't that Link considered himself particularly intelligent. Back in Ordon Village, he'd developed a particular sense of creativity – in his father's eyes, it'd sometimes even been curiosity that stretched to the point of stupidity, but his mother only encouraged him.

Fado had been the strong one, after all, hefting things around and winning at many of the physical challenges they set themselves to completing as children, while Ilia was the smart one, often surrounding herself with books when the boys were being petty and wouldn't let her join their games. (To the credit of their youthful selves, she couldn't do much when their parents forced them to, anyway.) He had been the odd one out, and not simply for his ears; past strength and knowledge, there was need for little else in group dynamics, but Link eventually found ways to circumvent their superiority in those terms.

When it came to wrangling, for example, Fado would never know that the goats had certain patterns to the way they speared their horns left and right. While his friend found the tests Ilia insisted on using to 'keep their minds aloft amidst the hard labor', Link found the problem easily solved when he discovered that she was terribly distracted by the disjointed barking of Malo and Talo's dog, whenever he sent Epona to the task of trotting around the fields and causing a ruckus with the cuccos.

So when Maeva shrugged and begrudgingly handed him the item, it wasn't very difficult to figure out that he need only slip his hand into the wood to unspool the tight chain connecting the claw and the base using a set of small chain links between his fingers. The claw extended swiftly from the handle, chains clinking, but hit the chamber wall with nothing to hold, and recoiled painfully against Link's fingers. His yelp drew Ooccoo Junior's attention.

"Oh, you found a clawshot!" said the boy, resting on the tip. "I haven't seen one for a long time! I feel like we've been away forever."

"A useful contraption that is commonplace in our home," Ooccoo explained when Link and Maeva quirked eyebrows at her son.

"What is it doing here, exactly?" asked Gale.

"Who knows? Taking an adventure of its own, maybe?" Ooccoo tittered. Maeva and Link exchanged blank expressions; only Ooccoo Junior laughed.

Gale continued with a cough, "Anyway, Midna's right. We have to find a way out of here."

Inspecting the clawshot with his hands, Link added, "Hopefully, this helps."

Maeva trudged through the now murky liquid beneath her knees and stood in front of the gate. Tilting her head upward, she asked, "Do you think the clawshot will work on that?"

"Oh! Good idea."

"Naturally," Maeva muttered, shrugging off his praise almost absentmindedly; the turn of her head obscured her face from view. Meanwhile, Gale gave a long 'hmmm.' "Am I the only one who thinks this is awfully convenient?"

"Maybe others have come this way before," Ooccoo Junior thought aloud. The thought seemed to excite him, as his voice grew louder and he spoke quickly, "And maybe they even used the same clawshot! And put it in that treasure chest Maeva found to preserve it, just in case someone would come here again, someday!"

Maeva gave it some thought, wondering if his theories held some form of truth in them. But if anyone had ever gone through a temple like this – what purpose could it have served? "It's merely a coincidence, Junior," she said with an almost apologetic tone.

"Most likely," agreed Link, and ended the conversation by discharging the claw upward. It clasped around the latch, and with another pull of his fingers, it loosened downward, and the gate lifted to allow them passage.

They stood on the edge of a precipice so high that only darkness greeted Maeva's vision below. A cold wind rushed in behind them right as the door closed, or perhaps it was that they were so accustomed to being at least partly stooped in water that the dry made them shiver. Maeva's chest was spared from this, but as the Zora armor was sewn with shortsleeves, goosebumps rose all over her arms.

"I want more feathers," Ooccoo Junior whimpered, looking pale.

"Too cold," his mother agreed, voice shaking.

Link raised open his Pocket and beckoned with both pity and apology, as though it were his fault they were there. "Stay inside."

Gale remained in Maeva's hands because she couldn't feel as a boomerang, and she wanted to measure the wide abyss between them and the porcelain door far across. It was greater than the gap across which the monkeys had swung them in Faron, and spotted with tall rocks flat and wide enough to step on. But the gaps between them were too wide to jump across.

It was difficult to believe that this existed within the confines of the temple; Maeva wondered about its size in comparison with Death Mountain. She remembered the place fondly, despite how sweat was all abound; at least it was a constant companion, unlike the water. She sorely missed the warmth and the friendly smiles of the Goron people she had met in the celebration; even the manipulative ways of Gor Liggs.

Link considered rousing Ooccoo Junior for a moment when Maeva gave a disappointed sigh, but shook his head twice to clear it. Amidst the rocks were two steel blue tops in constant rotation, each with five yellow latches beneath their jagged lids, fitted together like gears.

It was almost too easy.

Something snaked around Maeva's waist and clutched it, causing her to start. When she reached for her staff, she elbowed Link in the face by accident and realized the thing had been his left arm, and that they were being hoisted into the air by a little claw no bigger than his left hand and hers combined.

"Ow!"

"Oops," she remarked, blinking in surprise. When Link's forehead began to turn red where she hit him, she added with some difficulty, eyes shifty, "S…orry." And then went back to her usual tone. "But that was your fault. You should have warned me!"

Link stared at her, mouth agape in indignance, but the half-apologetic, half-haughty expression he saw made him only laugh in disbelief. Only she could say such a thing to him. "Right."

Maeva scoffed, inwardly, as the top of the first gear shifted and Link swung his feet forward, landing them on one of the high plateaus between the machines. Did he take some manner of fun out of infuriating her? Rabor had never been the type to laugh at her, and neither did Zelk to Rell, but Saemi had surmised that it was because the boy hoped to impress their youngest member, no matter if they were already arranged to marry. Siv was the eldest and had already wed Hepfi, so there was no need for that from him. But Hidram and Zant, with their respective lovers—

Link scooped her up again, aiming for the next gear and cutting off her flow of thought. And just as well, she supposed, because there was little room for memories of them. Maeva had succeeded in putting them out of her mind for the past few months, focusing on listening to Zelda's plight so she might feel for the princess's people when the time came to save Hyrule, and she would have to continue until they did.

She nodded gratefully at the goddesses when Link swung again and finally set them on the precipice they had only seen from afar. Could the three hear her from afar, she wondered?

"Do you even know where you're going?" Midna demanded out of nowhere, rising from Link's shadow to stand between them. Maeva didn't understand why she spoke in their language or why she was reprimanding her; in the beginning of their journey, she always yelled at Link, saving the subtle, spiteful words for her in the background. Had she taken to him to the point that her spite for Maeva would return in full force?

"We should be going deeper into the temple to find the Fused Shadow, not dawdling around! Maybe you're absentminded after all, but I…"

Maeva no longer concealed her exasperated sigh. "I understand," she drawled, but in the light realm's tongue, controlling her tone just to keep to a certain level of respect. Midna only shook her head and dove back into the shadows.

When Maeva raised her head again – she hadn't realized her eyes were downcast – Link was staring. "Maeva," he began, and paused. When she frowned with obvious impatience but said nothing, he continued. "You can understand Midna? When she speaks that language?"

The question gave her something else on which to focus, so Maeva nodded slowly, taking deep breaths. She reminded herself constantly that it was Midna's place to be angry, but she couldn't help the resentment. "My ear is trained to her speech. But we shouldn't dawdle about," she said, eyes catching the handlebars on the porcelain door before them, and lifted them open. "We are to find a way to the Fused Shadow. It should be at the heart of this place, like all the others."

They were crossing another mossy bridge bearing ancient writing as railings hanging over the river, and if they looked hard enough, they would see the first they passed as they entered the temple. Upon entrance, Ooccoo climbed out of Link's Pocket, noisily flapping her wings and interrupting the silence that came with appreciating the scent of the freshwater below.

"We must have gone a long way down through that slide, where we got the clawshot!" she said, head turning anxiously. "Ah! I know this place. We should enter that room with the pretty chandelier soon!"

Link nodded, but when they passed the door and the light fell upon their faces in almond-shaped fragments, he beamed. "Nice, Ooccoo. We can get our bearings here." He watched Maeva expectantly.

It felt like a lifetime past since anyone asked for her opinion, but she welcomed it like a childhood memory long lost and suddenly reclaimed, out of nowhere: with great joy, though hidden, and some pride. She nodded. "That will do."

"Great," said Link, watching the shadows ease from her face, and discharged the clawshot at the lever above them. The rotating stairs turned their way at once, water flowing down to their level, but Maeva shook her head.

"The stairs are unnecessary. We need a way deeper inside the temple. Deeper. Maybe we should return, see what lay beneath the shadows."

"We've never had to turn back before," said Link, his mind's eye cycling back to the Forest Temple and the Goron Mines, "save for some places we missed, but we've gone everywhere, and Junior's pulled all the levers."

"We can't have gone everywhere," said Gale. "Otherwise, we'd know where the Fused Shadow was."

While the two searched their surroundings, Ooccoo flew off her perch on Link's head and sat near the edge of the floor, facing the stairway. Maeva noticed immediately, for Ooccoo spoke in her shrill tones whenever she moved, and knew something was amiss when the oocca did not. "What?" asked Maeva, crouching next to the woman. She cringed almost instinctively, expecting the high-pitched voice, but Ooccoo only narrowed her eyes at the bottom of the stair's axis. A pool of water surrounded it, going even deeper.

Link stood on the other side of Ooccoo and followed her gaze. "Maybe—"

"I know," said Maeva, pulling up the black cloth, and dove right in. Swimming without crutches was the one thing she would regret being unable to do outside Lakebed Temple. She could always don the Zora armor, of course, but that would run the risk of looking silly. And the Zora would see the markings on her arms – she didn't know yet how they would take to that. The ones guarding the temple had been distracted only by their sudden appearance to notice, she supposed.

She swam the circumference of the pool, going as deep as she could, but there were only grates at the bottom leading nowhere. When Maeva rose, she came out to the other side of the area. Link had already followed her form and stood above her, waiting for her to speak. "Nothing," she said, back against the staircase axis. The moss pressed against her neck when she tilted her head upward, searching for a way back to her companions, but they paid her no mind, eyes trained on something above her. They seemed to discuss something. Huffing, she climbed the moss behind her and found the object of their ruminations.

It was a door wrapped in chains. Maeva saw then that the water level in the room had risen thanks to Ooccoo Junior's love of lever-pulling, because she hadn't taken notice of it earlier.

Link narrowed his eyes at the door next to Maeva. "You don't think…"

"Come now," said Ooccoo, "Adventurers live for the unknown! And I smell treasure."

Maeva shot them both dirty looks. "And you couldn't have said this earlier, before we began traipsing around the temple?"

"Wel, I couldn't have, really!" said the oocca, flying toward her and landing on her head. Maeva squinted up at her with some annoyance, but Ooccoo didn't tighten her claws around her scalp as she had in the Forest Temple, so she gave only a shake of her head. "Stay still, dear. The way seemed clouded earlier…must have been all the water missing! But my senses are clear now. Isn't that right, dear?" she called out in Link's direction.

"Yeah!" Ooccoo Junior chirped, appearing from Link's bag. "It's definitely here!" Slightly bouncing, he hovered next to Maeva. "If only we could open this door…"

"Do you think you can teleport inside?" asked Maeva. "As in the Goron Mines?"

"He doesn't know what it's like inside," said Ooccoo. "It's dangerous."

"I could try," he offered anyway.

"No, it's fine," said Maeva. She clasped her hands around the knot formed by the chains and squeezed, concentrating on putting strength into the shadows beneath her palms. The tendrils under her fingers seeped into the weakest links, chipping at them with all her might.

"Maeva, what are you doing?" asked Link, his bewilderment ringing clearly. Even he wouldn't have thought to try that; at least, not as a human. Her muscles hardly even showed as they had whenever she hung from his grasp – was she really trying, or simply acting, and why? Just when he thought he had her general character mapped out – she ignored the calls of their other companions, too. "Maeva…"

She whirled at him breathlessly, mouth open and ready with a retort, but the beads of sweat over her brows dripped into her lashes. Blinking, she batted away at them and released the chains, unslinking from each other and clattering into a pile beside her. Link swallowed whatever remark he'd formed in his mind. "…Wow."

"You did it, Maeva!" the oocca pair laughed. Floating beside Link, Gale gave a sharp whistle. "Talk about strength!"

Maeva only nodded, still recovering from the exercise. She hadn't attempted to manipulate the shadows to such an extent since, perhaps, the Faron province. So it was that length of time which Midna had noticed. She'd scoffed at her attempts to do so earlier as a human, but not a half hour had passed since she scolded Maeva for ceasing them. When Link's hand squeezed her shoulder, she came out of her thoughts.

"Nice work," he said, water dripping from his nose into his smile. "I guess I should think twice about who to let the Gorons wrestle next time."

The exchange felt familiar, so even as she was unable to form a coherent thought in her mind, Maeva was able to roll her eyes. "Didn't I tell you so?"

"I stand corrected," Link replied with a grin.

What was he so happy about, now? But Maeva didn't bother asking, for the door had lowered and their companions were already flying in. In any case, she was tired, which made her much more prone to saying hurtful things.

"My, this room is certainly – tiny," Ooccoo said from inside.

"Maeva, are you coming?" Link called.

And when had she begun to care how her words would affect Link? Maeva sighed, following Ooccoo Junior when he came out to fetch her. She knew the answer was Ilia. It crossed her mind – for the sake of the others, of course – that she would undoubtedly drive him away from them if she continued to spite him. At any rate, the action seemed perfunctory now, even excessive. When he wasn't being infuriating, after all, his presence was a nice touch to her day. Not that he could ever find out.

If Ooccoo said anything was small, it must have been true; in fact, if Link had been three inches taller, he wouldn't have fit inside the room. The only thing of note was a small circular grate in its center.

"I smell water," said Link.

"It smells that way everywhere," replied Maeva.

"I smell treasure!" declared Ooccoo Junior, and was backed by his mother with a series of vigorous nods. Gale was quiet.

"Ooccoo is right," said Midna, appearing with her little legs crossed over the lid. "I can feel the piece – down there." She quirked a brow ridge at Maeva. "Can't you?"

Maeva kept the shadows on her feet firmly still. Indeed she could attest to the dark power's existence beneath them, but when she removed her effort, her sense of it disappeared. She scratched at a stinging itch on her right shoulder. It must have been her abundant use of it earlier; like she was drawing from a limited pool of power and it had dried up when she broke the door chains. "Barely," was her answer.

"Well…that can only be because of your complacency," said Midna.

Something bubbled in the back of Maeva's mind. It caused her fists to clench and shoulders to shake. "I'm not complacent!" she shouted, a late response. "I wouldn't be fighting if I were complacent!"

The silence was heavy when she was finished, the others glancing between Maeva and Midna, ready to prevent anything they might start, but Midna chose not to respond. She turned to the others. "Anyway, this is the last piece, everyone. Maeva and I are sorry to have dragged you all over the place…trust me, we wouldn't have if we didn't need all your help. But just a little more and we should be home free! When we're done with that usurper, we can even find your city in the sky, Ooccoo. Junior."

"You'd be welcome always," replied the oocca, smiling, both at the thought and with relief, and then Midna dissipated into her shadow.

While the others discussed plans prematurely, in Link's opinion, he watched a silently seething Maeva.

"What?" she snapped when she noticed him.

"Nothing," he said, crouching down next to her and lifting the glass lid. "But this…seems more like a prison than a treasure chamber. A lot like Darbus's place, but underwater."

Maeva knelt beside him, much less on edge than a few seconds past. "So you think," she asked, "we'll face something down there?

Link nodded. "We should be careful." When their companions fit into his Pocket, he asked her, "Ready?"

His kindly smile was irritating, but she found it was mostly because she couldn't mirror it even in her mind. It shouldn't have been her way, to allow Midna's anger to dampen her spirits. Taking a deep breath, she nodded, but Link looked troubled as he stared into the water. It wasn't often she saw his eyebrows furrow.

Maeva knew all he could see were shadows. "Are you afraid the dark?" she laughed.

Link stiffened before smiling easily. "It's not that," he answered. "We can't exactly see in the dark, can we? We won't know which direction to go, and I don't see any light down there."

"Oh—" Maeva saved with a feigned expression of worry, and then climbed into the grate. "Yes, obviously. But I've a better feel for things, wearing almost all the armor. You may swim closer to me while I navigate." But then that was the entire point, she realized, so he couldn't even if he wanted to. Which she was sure he didn't.

"Here," she said, offering her hand. Link looked at her in confusion for almost a minute before he took it with a smile. It threw off Maeva, who sputtered a little. "Well—don't be. Don't be flattered. I'm…this is because – because you're helpless! You know."

Link answered with a lopsided grin. "Thanks, Maeva. I know I can count on you."

"Flatterer," Maeva scoffed, but pulled the black cloth over her nose when her face began to feel very hot, and pulled Link inside. They went even deeper into the lakebed, further than she could have imagined. The way was cylindrical in shape, like many tall rooms in the Temple, its walls covered in porcelain tiles. Link looked around blindly, helplessly as she tugged him along, his grip tight around her fingers.

"There's a light in the distance," Maeva said clearly through the cloth much later, but it wasn't as far as she thought. She could see sand at the bottom, and eight wooden pillars forming a circle planted deep inside it. A translucent pink tentacle of some sort floated about in the center, rooted into the sand as well, and illuminated the chamber with an eerie crackling blue light.

They swam to the very bottom, and even without effort Maeva could feel the dark power humming beneath their feet. Tapping one, she said, "It's here. Probably in this monster. We should cut it down before it notices us."

As though it was a secret knock or a password, the ground shook and the sand receded abruptly into a crater. A sphere of white slid towards the end of the tentacle, and then it rolled about and revealed itself as an eye not unlike Midna's. "It's in that monster," Maeva said with full certainty. "The dark power is in that monster!"

Maeva felt a tug at her fingers and saw that it was Link, asking for her to release his hand. Once she did, he swam to the tentacle, swinging a sword at the eye, but the water slowed his movements. The eye lowered itself into the sand again.

In a matter of seconds, before Maeva could understand the situation, a great bronze bulb had risen and taken the place of the crater, the same glowing tentacles swaying from its sides. A wrinkly red sphere inside opened to reveal sharp teeth. It was the monster Morpheel, though they wouldn't know it till months later.

Maeva cringed. Bombs might work – in fact, she was beginning to think that if Barnes could only control the time of explosion, they would be very useful in a long-range battle – but the water bombs the blacksmith gave Link were in his Pocket, and opening it would mean drowning their companions inside.

"What is that?" asked Link as they swam away from the thing, "A manifestation of the last piece, or something possessed, like Darbus?"

"It could've taken the form of a beast here," she replied. "But that's hardly the concern—wha—!"

A tentacle had snuck around Maeva's ankle and thrown her aside. When its clutch loosened and she recovered, it had already taken Link, dangling him over its mouth. It seemed monsters had a taste for the chosen hero of the gods, who swung at it to no avail. Letting out a yelp, Maeva quickly swam for the tentacle's base on the monster and pierced it with her staff. Sounds were normally muffled underwater, but Morpheel's shrieks were only amplified as he released her companion.

Maeva let out her own cry, covering her ears, but soon set to tugging at her staff. The tentacle was thick and viscous, making it difficult to retake her weapon. She looked up, around, searching for something that might anchor her and give her a better position, but only caught Morpheel's eye, staring at her from inside another tentacle.

"Maeva!" Link swam past her, "I have an idea!"

"Well? Let's hear it!" she grunted, kicking at Morpheel's bronze scales.

"Okay, but you have to trust me."

"Link!"

"All right, just – distract the fish, okay?"

Maeva cocked her head. "What fish?"

Link clapped his left hand on her shoulder in reply, the clawshot in position on his right. "I'll try to be quick!"

"Wait!" she called, though he'd already swum off. "What fish?"

Maeva heard the chomping sounds, then. Looking over her shoulder, she spotted the little cyan creatures snapping their jaws as they came for her. Suddenly she gathered the strength to yank her staff out of the Morpheel and swim away, right as they nipped at her feet. Maeva allowed the fish to reach her, seeing Link shoot the clawshot at the monster through the corner of her eye, and then caught them with the sharp end of her staff. The ones she managed to spear made croaking sounds, and then fell to the sand instead of simply floating as though they were made of lead. They were ticking a bright red, too—

"Uh-oh." Maeva wasn't able to paddle too far off, but the water contained most of the blast, and the fish managed to destroy and set off many of their brethren in the process. Just then, the Morpheel shrieked – Maeva wondered, ears protected by her hands, if that was an expression of anger towards the death of its children. She swam past the smoke and saw next to Link that the monster hadn't been some form of bulb as the shrub in the Forest Temple, body covered in hard scales and spikes, save for its head, dominated by tentacles and that wide inverted mouth.

"How do we defeat that?" she muttered.

Link took a deep breath. It was the first time Maeva saw him look daunted, or maybe it was because she had never cared to look at his face during the battle with Darbus and that Diababa. "The eye is still exposed," he said, "I have a plan."

"Yes?"

"Wait here," he answered, and swam up to where Morpheel circled the area atop the brown pillars. The discharging claw shot out, chasing the monster's eye, but though it was designed so that water would not hinder its speed, Link's aim was off and gave no consideration as to the Morpheel's movement.

Maeva growled, giving chase to both. How could he even think of taking responsibility for this on his own? When she reached him, Link appeared just as frustrated with his misses, but his voice betrayed none of it. "I can't get to it. When I get too close in front of him, his tentacles snap at me."

Before she could snatch it from him, he took her right hand and fitted the clawshot on it. "Pull down on the chain between your middle and ring finger to use the automatic mechanism. Can you try to anchor us to the eyelid?"

"There won't be a try," she replied, but the clawshot barely moved farther than her arm before recoiling.

Link shook his head. "I know it hurts, but pull harder!"

"You could have said it earlier," grumbled Maeva, but swam closer and aimed the clawshot along the Morpheel's path. This would definitely find its mark. "There—oof!"

The Morpheel had spotted her and set to sucking them into the vacuum of its mouth. Link tackle-swam her out of the way, saying, "No, no, aim from the back! This was exactly my problem."

"You know, you're starting to get a little bossy!" Maeva remarked, but took his words to heart. This was her specialty, after all. She didn't protest when Link dragged her away from the Morpheel's head and nearer the spikes of its body. When they were close enough behind its eye, she fired the claw and landed it inside the eye. "Did it—whoa!"

Morpheel shrieked, its eye searching in all directions while the chain recoiled in reverse, hauling Maeva forward. Hand clasped over her left, Link allowed himself to be dragged along and nodded at Maeva when they landed on the Morpheel. It swerved sharply and attempted to throw them off, but the clawshot was closed against its eye, which was much bigger up close and was beginning to tear up from the claw's pinching hold.

After what seemed like ages peering into the its red depths, focusing on staying afloat, Link cleaved his sword down on the eye. Immediately, Maeva unhooked the clawshot and reached to cover her ears. Link followed suit and dislodged his sword as the Morpheel thrashed about, wailing terribly until it crashed into the wall in its blind rage.

Maeva wondered what could lie outside the chamber's walls, for the water began to drain in a vicious whirlpool where the monster created a hole. Far from it, they hardly felt the pull, but inadvertently lowered towards the sand when the water level decreased.

The Morpheel lay still. "Is it dead?" asked Maeva, approaching it when the water was below her ankles.

The monster's bloody eye popped out and spun until it took the form of a heart container. Its scales ejected from its skin, revealing only shadows, which themselves scattered into particles floating all around them, and then assembled to form the last Fused Shadow. Something bright blue lit the area around them, still from unknown sources, as though the absence of the dark power necessitated the light.

Without its influence, Morpheel's form was that of a small eel, no longer than a prone Link. "It is now," he replied belatedly, lifting his Pocket open.

Midna appeared alongside Ooccoo, Junior and Gale, who delighted in the heart container's appearance, no matter if it was to be expected with the acquisition of the Fused Shadow. Maeva cherished the boost of energy. It seemed like ages since they'd eaten, but already she felt stronger. It was all she needed, after all – if she had more strength, she would have defeated Zant, could have saved their people.

"This is it!" Midna exclaimed, the piece rotating above her arms. "Now we can do something about Zant and his false power…"

"And then we can go home, too! Right, mama?" asked Ooccoo Junior, flitting to Link before she could answer. "Will you help us, Link? I want us to be together for our next adventure!"

"Sure," answered Link, smiling, but the matter of Zant still hung in the air. From what he understood, after all, the man had done horrible things to Midna's and Maeva's people, especially Maeva's parents, whose deaths still appeared to be a fresh wound for her. The girl herself stood off to the side, next to a floating Gale, but they didn't speak.

"Hey, Maeva," he said, when Ooccoo Junior cheered and asked his mother if she heard that Link had given his assent.

"Hmm?" Maeva replied absentmindedly, having changed into her usual clothes while the males had their backs turned, watching Midna like a hawk as the imp opened a portal of black and green over the water.

Link stepped forward and blocked her view. "About the bossy thing earlier…I don't mean to be. What I meant was—"

"What are you apologizing for?" Midna's voice cut sharply through his soft tone. "Like I said earlier, sometimes you have to be that way for Maeva to understand."

Link turned around, raising a hand to stop her. "Midna—"

He wasn't prepared for Maeva, who shoved past him to stand before the floating woman. "What?" she demanded, voice so loud that had Gale been high up in the temple, she still would have heard the echo of the girl's anger.

"What haven't I done to gain your ire? I understand, Midna. I understand how furious you must be, how you must resent my presence every day – I know! Whatever hatred you feel for me, for my existence, I've felt it a million times more. And never does it abate!"

The chamber was thick with shock and fury. Midna stared hotly at Maeva, daring her to continue. Ooccoo and her son exchanged glances with Gale and Link, who tried again. "Maeva—"

"Don't interrupt! This is a long time coming. Haven't I done enough? I patiently spent those months with Zelda, wasting away in a broken castle with a princess I could never hope to aid, under your orders. You deprived me of our bond for months, cut yourself away from me, the highest dishonor for one of the Nine, and I said nothing!" Her voice wavered, but she swallowed the weak emotion rising in her throat, causing a ringing in her ears.

"I know my ignorance brought them down. It brought us all down. And that is a wound I will always bear – you and I both, Midna! But I am paying my dues. I'm doing all I can...and you were my best friend! You know I would never bring harm to you willingly! So why? You have the option to let it heal. At least a little. Why do you let it fester? It's exactly what Zant did. He planted that seed of resentment and nurtured it until not even you could—"

"Don't you ever compare me to that usurper!" Midna screamed, breathing uneven as she watched Maeva's cheek sting red. It should have roused her, calmed her and reminded her of better days, but the little effect of her tiny hand only persuaded her to recall what the girl had caused. "I will never be like Zant. It was you – it was you who fell for his act and followed him here!"

"Only I?" Maeva scoffed, hand on her cheek. "You knew him before I met any of you! You planted delusions of grandeur in his head, talking of great changes among our people – and I suppose you were right! Look at them now!"

Midna's eye widened. The light in the room fluctuated and dimmed as she growled. "Me? You encouraged him! I knew nothing of his plans; I'd persuaded him that he was content until you came along and agreed that going on a fancy trip to the light realm would be absolutely wonderful!"

"Perhaps! But you were the reason he sought out that terrifying god in the first place! If you hadn't said to him that one night that he was absolutely brilliant—"

"It doesn't matter!" Midna screeched, jabbing a finger between Maeva's chest. "It's your fault everybody died!"

Silence swept the room. Maeva's jaw fell slack, eyes steady until she recovered and closed her mouth, standing straight as though it was the last she could retain of her dignity. "Then," she said, blinking away tears, "I suppose you must wish that I never existed at all."

Midna's glare wavered, as though her ears had only then caught up with her own words, but she said nothing and turned away, shoulders slumped in fatigue. "I think…you should return to Zelda."

Maeva stalked over to the portal, shrugging off Link's hand before he could even reach for her shoulder. "I will see Zant's end; you can't take that away from me. But after that – I will obey, and you will have your wish."

She fragmented into the portal and disappeared. Link cast his eyes on Midna. "Midna—"

Gale sent a hushing wind his way. In cases like these, male input tended to be better unsaid. Link wasn't a regular boy, of course, but she wouldn't take her chances with what was, for some reason she wished Maeva would just share with her, such a sensitive topic. Floating at the imp's side, she said, "I don't know…did you really think that was necessary? I know there's a lot between you two that we don't understand, but—"

"You're right. There is a lot you don't understand," said Midna, less snappish than gravely. "You should stay out of it."

"Midna, dear—" Ooccoo frowned. Her son had watched the exchange, eyes fearful and then sad. It pained them all to see friends that way, no matter if Maeva deserved Midna's anger. "I've kept quiet long enough. Whatever anger you must have – you know better than anyone that words are never to be taken lightly."

Midna sighed, but replaced her challenging expression for Gale with one of apology. "…Let's go."

Link opened his mouth, but Ooccoo shot him a solemn look and shook her head. Ooccoo, of all people? Ooccoo, who squawked and chatted her way through their journey, digging her claws into his hat and saying everything that came to mind, was now the reasonable one in their party, and telling Midna off? He could almost swear that it was another vision by Lanayru, except Maeva wasn't there and so it couldn't have been.

"Come on, Link," said Ooccoo Junior, his voice that was often as loud as his mother's then as quiet as a mouse's, as small as his own body. The boy's strong nudge surprised him into a tumble, but he fell into Midna's portal with their companions all the same.

A blunt force knocked Link on his posterior as soon as he recognized the dewy scent of Lanayru's spring.

"No!" Maeva cried. She had pushed him back when they appeared, as though a portal still existed beneath him. "Midna, go back!"

Link reached for his painful tailbone, about to ask what the matter had been when he saw the unfamiliar brown shoes some ways before him, yellowing ankle wrappings similar to Maeva's above them. Automatically, then, his eyes traveled upward. A black cloak glowing with green lines, letters he would never understand, with strips of white cloth at the baggy wrist sleeves and a red insignia draped at the center. A part of him – so deep inside that he could swear it must have belonged to someone else – knew he should have recognized it, but he didn't have time for introspection. It was making a sound—that triangular steel helm that made for a deformed lizard face, narrow irises bulging and tongue curled out in a taunt.

The figure was tall – taller than him, certainly, and he would stand to check just by how much if Maeva wasn't still holding her arms behind her as if she were defending him from Lord Bullbo – but he wasn't instilled with the fear that seemed to have gripped his companions. He was shocked, to be sure, but a strong emotion pervaded all thought, one he had never felt in all his twenty-one years.

Link's shadow stretched forward, but it wasn't Midna attempting to get out – he felt holy light shine from behind him. The figure waved an arm, and the light dimmed. He couldn't see it himself, but he could tell when Maeva whirled and watched with a horrified gaze filled with unabashed fear that Lanayru had been overpowered.

The shoulders beneath the cloak shook; it was deep laughter, and suddenly Link understood that it was bubbling hatred rising in his chest.

"Ah, Midna... Little Maeva," said the figure, tilting his head slightly, mockingly, "did you honestly mean to take an ancient and withered power like this and turn it against me? Did you truly think you would survive collecting those antiques if I didn't find it an amusing diversion for you?"

"Don't come any closer," Maeva snarled, a hand firmly raised to stop him, but Link could see her knees shaking to the point that a soft breeze would send her buckling. He didn't see the shadow tendrils she tried to work against the monster before her falling limp in the face of his greater power. "Zant…!"

Zant. Link's eyes widened, but in some ways he had already known. He jerked, as though waking from a trance, but he could only move his neck. To his right, Ooccoo, Gale and and Ooccoo Junior, frozen in the air. To his left, a floating Midna, closed mouth bound by nothing, but she shook her head and struggled as though a hand was clamped over it.

"Don't you touch her again," Maeva continued. "You were never worthy!"

Zant gave only another chuckle and turned his head to Midna. "Tut, tut. I was so certain that you would cease your association with this foolish traitor. She betrayed us both, you know. Why do you defy your King to keep friendship with a truant? Return to my side. It has always been your place."

"Never," said Midna hoarsely, managing to open her mouth. "My king?" her tone dripped with venom. "You, who do nothing but abuse your magic? You must be joking!"

Link could have sworn he saw Zant's foot twitch in an odd upward angle, but he had no time to process it when Midna grunted in pain beside him, her body slammed against the air as though she'd hit some wall. He tried to move, begging even just his fingers to curl, but their bodies were at Zant's mercy. A little more and Link would touch upon the desire to scream in frustration.

"How dare you?" Zant rasped, his deep voice raising slightly. "Are you implying—"

Maeva let out a shriek that might have rivaled Morpheel's, fury flashing across her face in uncontrollable rage. Her body was stuck, just like the rest of them, but she thrashed about so much in her mind's eye that her foot moved almost an inch. "Don't touch her!" she screeched. "If you touch her again, you usurping traitor, I swear by Din's fire I will rip you apart!"

Zant gave a long, affected sigh. "What would Rabor think upon hearing such vulgar words? …Ah, forgive me – he was a traitor, too. Then again, his life always mattered little to you. But – this human!"

Link lost his sprawled footing on the ground and felt a force lift him into the air by the neck. He tried not to show pain, but his body couldn't help but choke.

"Link has no business with you—" Maeva spoke lamely, before her voice started again. "Release him! Haven't you killed enough?"

"I wondered the same after you murdered your parents, little Maeva, but on you went, slaying our kinsmen." Zant laughed. "Have you replaced us with him? With this…Link?" he spat. "Don't you understand? That boy is one of the light dwellers who oppressed our people. No matter how much you may desire otherwise, you will never be more than a shadow in their world. You cannot consort with their kind!"

"Only you believe that," Maeva replied, but the hopelessness rang in her voice. "I only wanted to look upon them, but you – I could never see that you wanted their destruction so ardently. And all for this hatred, you tore us apart, turned traitor…!"

"You call me a traitor," said Zant, "but it was you who wished to become as them, to remove all traces of our history! Do you think your companions will continue to stand by you when they discover what you are?" He turned his head to them, dropping Link. "A glimpse should be enough for these light creatures to spurn you."

Maeva had been certain that the extent of physical pain could go no further than the time he'd brought out their markings until she felt his power scraping from one ear to the next. When Zant's god had granted her the skin, it felt like her own – there was a hot sensation when she came close to magma, and her fingers were difficult to move in the cold atmosphere of the frozen Zora Domain, though the blush and the blue caused by the environment of the light realm hardly ever showed outwardly – and so this removal felt like he'd pressed a knife to her ear and peeled, slowly, as if to savor the moment. Far beyond the high-pitched tone ringing in her ear, she could hear screaming, but she couldn't tell if it was Gale's, Ooccoo's, Midna's, or hers.

It wasn't long after green bands around her wrists and ankles shed off her fair complexion back like shackles when she passed out. They weren't bands, however, but her true skin, dark green like Midna's with glowing clover etchings. Zant lifted an arm and Maeva was hefted into the air, eyes forced open to reveal red irises as bright as those belonging to Midna, who screamed at Zant in the language Link didn't comprehend. Conscious again, Maeva weakly shook her head, but her lips seemed glued together.

"Do you still want her?"

Link had only just shouted angrily and moved, forced himself to stand and lunge at Zant when he was thrown back. The monster seemed almost surprised at his ability to move so freely, taking a step back and losing enough concentration to drop Maeva, until he laughed back his confidence.

"Maeva…" Link groaned raspily, willing himself up. It crossed his mind, out of nowhere, that this was what Lanayru had meant, that her red eyes and her glowing markings were no illusion or example, but he didn't care. "Are you—"

"Stay back," she cried, turning her face away from him yet moving to serve as a barrier between him and Zant. "You'll—he'll kill you!"

"Fool!" Zant sneered. "Did you think to fight against the power granted to me by my god? It is the magic of the king of Twilight, and you will respect it!"

"You are a monster, Zant!" Midna screamed, still struggling.

Zant spoke as if she hadn't, his condescending tone giving way to one of a conspicuous attempt at persuasion. If Link wasn't blinded by anger, he might have recognized it as desperation. But he was too busy fighting to move, listening to the screams dying in Maeva's throat and watching her tears of frustration to notice Zant step closer to Midna.

He leaned his head close to hers, the tongue of his reptilian helm lifting to reveal his white lips hovering over Midna's ear. "We can make their world ours, and light and darkness can meet at last! This is why I need you. Not just for me, but for all our people. Lend me your power, my Midna…"

She spat on his face and repeated, "Never."

Zant reared back as though burnt. Wiping his face with his cloak, his helm shut with a clang of finality.

"So be it," he said coldly. "I will return you to the light world you covet!"

A familiar warmth filled the room, and the holy light to which they had grown accustomed was painful. Not for of its blinding glare, Link realized, but because it elicited an ear-splitting cry from Midna. He scrambled to his feet and was surprised that he could move; even more surprised that Maeva backed into him as though she was trying to stop him.

When he took her full weight and attempted to push back, Link caught a glimpse over her shoulder and saw that though her mouth was still clamped shut, the flesh of her hands peeled back into green like melting paint as they trembled violently against a red sphere of light pushing at her, causing her whole body to shake.

It was a rock. Maeva felt the full concentration of Zant's power within it encased in the bloody signature of his god. He must have thought that Midna's cry would distract her, but it only gave her more reason to train her mind to his presence. Zant had hurled it at Link; on instinct, Maeva blocked its way and caught it in her palms. Midna would have done the same, something said in her mind. It was almost as loud as the thought that Link wouldn't have hesitated to protect her from something so evil, in turn.

Midna's limp body fell downward, but when she collapsed on the ground, they were no longer in Lanayru's cave. It was dark, but there was the natural light of the moon over them. Up ahead, Hyrule Castle wasn't far off. Link and Maeva were sprawled on the ground, Ooccoo, Junior, and Gale beside them. Midna lay on Maeva's stomach. She was an exceedingly pale green and her fiery hair was the dying wisp of a flame.

"Hero chosen by the goddesses," Lanayru's panting voice echoed from far away, "My power can only sustain her for little more than a day. You must go to the princess locked away in the castle…"

Link opened his eyes and found Ooccoo and Gale cursing their helplessness and weeping over their companions. Ooccoo Junior was out cold, too.

"Link, dear," Ooccoo's clear voice pulled him from the frenzy that was his mind. "We have to find that princess in the castle!"

"Maeva doesn't look much better," said Gale, her voice quivering with worry. Link stared at them for a second and quickly attempted to stand, only for his legs to wobble. "You're in shock," she said. "T-Tired. You can't expect to walk all the way…"

"Then what can I do?" Link found his voice in that brief spike of anger. Ooccoo's head turned to him, though she didn't appear as shocked as he expected. Gale was as quiet as, it seemed, the plain around them. "I can't just…" His shoulders slumped. "We need Epona. I asked Telma to bring her back to the castle town."

Without a word, Gale sent a wind around the plain. The cyclone returned to him a summoning reed. Link felt the childish urge to bat away at the cold furiously, even though he knew it wasn't the fairy's intention. Instead, he nodded gratefully. When he put his mouth to the reed and played, Maeva stirred.

"Maeva!" they exclaimed, but she sat and held Midna's limp body to herself, watching them all with a look he hadn't seen since they first met at Ordona's spring. Maeva raised her hand to them, warily reminiscent of a cornered beast prepared to strike at any moment.

"Don't—don't look at me!" she cried out, and Link knew at once that he never wanted her to look at him in that manner ever again. He reached out and gripped her by the shoulders so tightly that she winced.

"We're okay, Maeva," he said softly, no matter if his breathing was ragged. Midna's patterns didn't give him hope, either. "Lanayru got us away before…"

Maeva shook her head, left arm still around Midna, gaze flitting between her companions and her free hand, partly green and partly the color of regular human flesh. It reached for her eyes. "But I—I'm—"

"No one cares, Maeva," Gale snapped.

Maeva ceased her sputtering. Finally, she held their gazes for more than a second. "Don't you?"

"If your true form repulsed us as you believe, dear, well, why would we accept Midna to begin with?" asked Ooccoo, wing on her arm. Her son lay still on her back. "We are all a different manner of creature."

Maeva accepted Ooccoo's wing with a squeeze of her hand, then froze. Link wasn't saying a word. She dared to meet his eyes. "Are you…angry?"

Link's sigh was a weary one, but unlike Zant's it was wholly genuine. "No, Maeva. It's just – why didn't you tell me the truth earlier? Did you really think I was so…so shallow?"

"I don't know," Maeva blurted out with an apologetic inflection all of them heard for the first time. "I don't know… It's because…I thought you would consider me a monster. It's because you're so—"

"Just to clarify," said Gale, making the sound of clearing her throat. "You're not that special, you know. I'm a fairy. We're pretty rare, too."

Their companions gave nods of agreement. Maeva was quiet for a long time, staring only at Midna and blinking her watering eyes in restraint, and then she looked at them all with gratitude. "Thank you."

They were too fatigued to speak after that, no matter if Link had as many questions as there were hostile bulblins he wanted to ask Maeva. She cradled Midna against her chest, murmuring things he now understood to be their language, and refused to allow anyone else to hold, much less touch her. Their companions settled inside Link's pocket, and when Epona arrived, Maeva had already found a way to sleep sitting up.

When they arrived at the gates, she was wide awake again. "How do we enter?" asked Maeva, head still lowered. The markings on her wrists glowed under the shadow of the town's outer wall as she reached up to pat her hair down. She was trying and failing to push her wispy bangs down, low enough to cover her eyes.

Link dismounted. "Wait here with Epona."

"Wait! What about—" called Maeva. Link strolled into the gate without a reply or even a sideward glance. Although she felt weak, she knew her voice had been loud enough to be heard from the immediate opposite side of the gate. This, she thought, must be the full weight of his…Maeva couldn't be certain if it was anger, distrust, or both. A time back she would have felt indignant. Who was he, after all, to expect her trust?

But in the short span of days they had taken to travel across Hyrule, somehow, he managed to make her feel as indebted to him as she was to Zelda, who could have easily surrendered her to Zant in exchange for a more pleasant cage in the castle.

The events replayed in her mind without cease, though not always in order. Midna being torn from her, exposed to the holy light to which she wasn't immune; Zant attempting to force that twilight on Link; Midna exposed to the holy light; Zant ripping out her skin; Midna exposed to the holy light; Link shouting not in disgust at her appearance but indignance for her, because for some reason…for some reason, he wanted to protect her.

She didn't know what it could be. And, of course, it would never escape her that she could do nothing to stop Zant from exposing Midna to what could have killed her had Lanayru not intervened.

Maeva felt her breath hitch and realized she was crying, saw the tear on Midna's exposed eyelid. Wiping it, she recalled a story Zant shared with them about maidens whose sweet tears could heal the gravest of wounds. More than becoming the chosen hero, she now wished she could become that maiden, or anyone, for her charge, but her tears were salty and in truth Midna was always the one who tended to her, even when she was one of the Nine and it should have been otherwise. If she had only the power…

Epona made a sound that woke Maeva from her trance. The way she whinnied softly once more, it was almost as if the mare could understand the solemn mood about them. Link emerged from the town gates, dark cloaks draped over his arm. They were simple and highly conspicuous, but loose and actually common to many stalking about the city who preferred to keep to their own business.

He helped her get down and held out first a cover of cloth fit for wrapping a child in. Upon remembering the Fused Shadow on Midna's head, however, Link's calm façade broke. He appeared almost worried. "Is there any way we can take this off?"

"I can…" Maeva sighed. "Here, hold her." The shadows on her fingers reached out for Midna's helmet, and Maeva almost jumped in shock. She hadn't had such control of the tendrils since before she was granted the human flesh. It was still limited compared to the power granted to the Nine, but here was a boon from Zant's punishment. The tendrils lifted the Fused Shadow in the air and integrated it into themselves, into her. Maeva gasped at the burst of power, though it was cut short by its state of fragmentation.

Link nodded and fit Midna into the cloth. She looked to be an overgrown child, but accompanied by them, hooded with only a glimpse to their noses, no one would think to question the sight.

When Maeva donned the cloak, she dared to speak. "How do we enter the castle?"

"Not yet," said Link, his eyes meeting hers for the first time since he returned. Maeva felt such relief when he neither flinched nor appeared to have any pity for her, for that would only wound her shattered ego; and then a knotting in her stomach reminded her that it could be because he was angry. "We should get to an inn."

"No…we have to save Midna now. Can you see her? She looks so…so gray! It's not—"

Link squeezed her shoulder. "Maeva," he said quietly, "Lanayru said it could keep her alive for more than a day. I trust it."

"The way we trusted it to protect us from Zant?" she demanded hysterically.

"Listen," Link hissed, but his gaze softened. "This is as much for you as it is for Midna. We know the castle is guarded by the beasts. We can't storm in there with you…looking like this. You're about to collapse."

Maeva did feel weary. Still, she retorted, "You look worse for wear, too."

"All the more reason," he replied, and lifted his hood. "Let's go."

The cloaks did garner odd looks from the town, but they were largely ignored and Link soon guided them into the narrow alleys Maeva preferred in their suspicious apparel. She kept her eyes on Midna all the while, forgetting even to look curiously as Link led them past the colorful lights of Fanadi's Palace.

"Here," he said when they stopped at an unfamiliar road, handing her a small key and the Pocket. "Two doors before the road intersects here is an Inn. I reserved a large room with three beds. Second floor, last one down the hall."

"Where will you go?"

"Returning Epona to the town stable. The owner will definitely have told Telma she ran off…but we'll talk with her tomorrow. I remember she mentioned a way into the castle."

Maeva nodded and slinked so silently into the darkness that Link wondered why he ever missed how comfortable she was there. Epona, too, maintained a solemn trot back to the stable, though she nuzzled her head against his leading arm the way back. It was tempting to rush to Telma now, ask for that passage into the castle she promised. He almost didn't care if he had to drag Renado from Kakariko to take her out to that café that seemed so popular with the townspeople here to get it out of her. He would go to that castle and clear out the monsters and return to Maeva and Midna and get them through safely.

Link wanted to do all those things, but he knew it was his fatigue talking. He hadn't felt this high strung with emotion since he was a child. That Maeva hadn't trusted him enough to tell him about her had upset him, but he wasn't even slighted by it anymore. From the way she spoke, she had done it for his approval…and the others'. He hadn't even thought that she considered that he had an opinion.

Bidding Epona good night and allowing her a last nuzzle, he turned and went straight for their inn, avoiding stray thoughts about uncovering Zant's mask and tearing his face apart with his beastly teeth, if he could ever get into that form again. Instead he thought of Lanayru's vision before it went awry. Could the light spirit really peer into his mind, heart, memories? His father had always asked his mother to watch the sunrise with him.

The inn he chose wasn't in the expensive part of town, but neither was it cheap by any means. He'd passed by it the day before during his trip to the man who'd owed Telma a caravan – that felt like a lifetime ago – and thought the painting of the rooms looked rather homely, but still gave an impression of being on vacation. (At least, what he'd imagined it to be. He'd never been on one and depended on his mother's stories about her youth for those.)

To his surprise, the room looked even better than in the painting. It was carpeted a deep red, the bedsheets and pillows were bright summer colors of orange, brown, and yellow, and the walls were a relaxing creamy white. Two lamps lit the room between the three beds, and one was standing on the desk near the balcony which opened into the lively evening.

The lamps were put out when Link entered, however, and only moonbeams crept past the curtains to lengthen the shadows of the room. Maeva had laid Ooccoo, Junior and Gale on the bed nearest the door. She sat by the edge of the one near the window, hand perched lightly on Midna's small ankle.

Taking an unused blanket from the Pocket tossed unceremoniously on what he guessed was his bed, Link placed it over her shoulders. Maeva jumped, reaching for her staff behind her, but it was on the floor next to the bed. She relaxed at the sight of him and nodded in greeting.

"You've got to rest, Maeva."

Maeva muttered something in reply.

Link sat beside her, taking in Midna's helpless state before asking, "What was that?"

"I don't know why I was surprised."

"Surprised…?"

"That Zant did this to us," she answered, looking at him. Link had liked the flecks of honey in her hazel eyes, but her red eyes, he realized, were natural no matter how odd. It was like seeing her again for the first time – to his surprise, his opinion hadn't changed. "Why I allowed a part of me to hope that he was still the man we grew up with. He was the one who gave me the markings, after all, after I received the human flesh."

After a pause, she added almost inaudibly, "His god asked me what I desired in exchange for loyalty, and thinking only that he was kind, I said…to dwell in the light realm without hindrance. I suppose – he saw into my heart, because he gave me this flesh."

Link gnawed on his inner cheek before reaching out for Maeva's hand. Her knuckles were sticky with tears. "I don't know what happened between you and Midna and Zant," he offered, "but you're a good person, Maeva."

Maeva clenched her fist at the statement, almost withdrew her hand, but didn't appear angry. Almost grateful, or the moon was playing with his mind. "I really did kill my own parents, you know."

Link didn't remove his gaze. "Did you want to?"

Maeva seemed to regret bringing it up immediately. Her face scrunched up like she was about to wail, but she took a sharp breath and collected herself. When she replied, she looked only very sad. "No."

"You're not a murderer," he said. Her true skin was soft and velvety, the markings on the back of her palm smooth as steel, but warm as the sunlight. The human flesh next to it, as she called it, was dry, almost flaky. He wondered why she'd ever want to replace the real thing. "Whatever the interlopers did…you had no part in it. No matter what these markings say."

"Why do you care so much?"

"Because," he answered without falter, shocking even himself, "I've trusted you with my life and you haven't failed me yet, Maeva. And I…I'm your friend. Even if you hate me."

Something in Maeva's chest twisted at that. "I don't hate you," she said after a pause. How could she now, when it was all thanks to him that she had gotten this far? No matter the futility, he tried to help Midna, help her when Zant attacked. Maeva knew now that it wasn't hatred she harbored for him at all. She felt unworthy before the chosen hero. Before Link, first and foremost. Her pride at being one of the Nine had birthed her envy, but she knew now that he was the beast from the stories in her childhood.

"You've offered me your friendship countless times even when I've done nothing to earn it. If it isn't too late…I'd like to be a friend to you too, Link."

Her hand removed itself from under his, but her left took it even more tightly – to shake it. Link was possessed with the urge to embrace her, but she had already turned away. Reaching for her shoulder, he said, "Go to sleep, Maeva. We're going to Princess Zelda even if we have to take over that castle ourselves."

Maeva turned, and later, when Link collapsed into bed, unable to sleep, he knew he would never forget the first genuine smile she had ever given him.

---

Maeva woke to whimpering. She started, pulling herself upright, and reached for the imp at her side. She had become gray over the course of the cold night. Her markings now barely glowed, and her hair was losing its color. Didn't Lanayru say more than a day? It had only been nearly half! Throat weakened by the threat of tears, Maeva whispered,

"Midna?"

She couldn't hear her own voice. Forcing herself to rise, Maeva parted the opaque curtains and saw the dark clouds poised above the castle town. The rain beat hard against the roof and the balcony outside the glass doors.

"Maeva!" came Ooccoo Junior's cry. Maeva cringed, knowing full well that it was the first time they would speak since Zant's revelation, but the boy only met her with a smile. In fact, and she didn't know which of their companions had put him up to it, he comforted her at once with his words, perching on her shoulder. "I just want you to know that you're pretty even if that evil Zant did that to you!"

She couldn't resist the young oocca. He'd flitted his way into her heart, irrevocably. With the tiniest smile, Maeva thanked him and asked, "Where are the others, Junior?"

"Out with Link. I was keeping an eye on us. I'm just glad we're all safe, Maeva!" said Ooccoo Junior, then turned to her bed. "And Midna's going to be saved, too."

Despite her worry, Maeva nodded her acceptance. To her surprise, Ooccoo Junior sat with her in silence, stroking Midna's hand and listening to nature's din. The rain must have been loud or she must've been thinking about things she couldn't remember – that was a lie, it consumed her mind ever and always that she was powerless when it came to protecting Midna – because when Link returned and Ooccoo Junior greeted him with his usual enthusiasm, she hardly noticed.

"Good morning, Junior," Link replied. "Gale and Ooccoo are with Epona at the stables. They insisted on keeping her company."

Maeva turned in surprise at the sound of his voice, but hers was mellow when she said, "Good morning."

Any trace of Link ever acting tough or yelling at her had disappeared. He granted her only a smile as he lifted something in his left hand. "I bought a basket," he explained. Dark brown, nearly black, it was woven neatly but without any remarkable designs. He'd taken the most affordable one Midna's size, having focused on the quality of cloth with which they would wrap her. "So we can carry Midna to the castle without having a hard time. Oh, and I have some lunch."

Maeva accepted the meal and looked back out the window, to the raindrops, growing in intensity, demanding their attention. The rain was not a shield, nor did it wash away the impurities surrounding them. It served only as a reminder that she was nothing to true forces of nature: Zant, his god, Link. And yet she could no longer begrudge the last for his ability, for the favor he'd been granted. She was only glad that in her powerlessness, she'd been granted such loyal companions.

"Thank you. I didn't know the market was open so early in the morning."

"Actually," said Link, "it's almost lunch time. It's just dark out because of the rain."

"Oh."

"That's a good thing, right, Link?" asked Ooccoo Junior. "We'll be more…um…more…incuspicious!"

"Inconspicuous," Link smiled. "Right."

"Have you gone to see Telma?" asked Maeva.

"Nope," he answered, shaking his head. "I was waiting for you. But do you want to rest first? Your ankle – it's swollen."

Wrapped in the white cloth, Maeva's ankle seemed more angular and bigger than usual. "Oh, that's only—" Her eyes widened at him. "You didn't touch it, did you?"

Link shook his head. "I didn't want to make it worse." And he didn't want her angry, just in case she still didn't want her touching him, much less unwrapping those bandages she liked to wear. "Why?"

"I believe you might get hurt if you touch the stone, so don't, all right?" said Maeva, quickly, like she had something else in mind. Taking a deep breath and squeezing her eyes shut, she faced Link. She couldn't remember when she thought she could confide anything in the Hero, be it her insecurities or pains or the aching of her left shoulder, but she dared to speak now. "Tell me, how do I face Telma? She knows what I…should look like, in my human form. She'll wonder…"

Link's sigh was almost inaudible. "Do you still think of all humans that way? That we'd shun you as soon as we see you?"

"No!" declared Ooccoo Junior.

Maeva glanced away again. She had none of his optimism. "I don't know. There are many who did. Or would. I suppose…many humans are different." Like him. Only him, she felt.

"Look." Link sat beside her, Ooccoo Junior nearly wedged between them. He didn't seem to mind, in any case, leaning on Link's thigh lazily. "I don't know if Telma's our friend" – he felt funny when he said our, he'd been saying it a lot but now it seemed like it actually meant something – "but you saved her life on that journey to Kakariko countless times. She has to know better than to shun you."

Maeva found this acceptable enough. Telma wasn't repulsed by the appearances of the oocca. Then again, she was of Zant's kind…but she hoped Link was right. "What if there are others? In the bar, I mean. It's open at this time of day, is it not?"

"You can't keep it hidden forever, but we'll come up with an excuse for now," Link acquiesced.

"Why?" Ooccoo Junior frowned, flapping his wings before Maeva. "Is it because of your eyes? Or your skin?"

Link lifted his hand to motion the child to himself, but Junior dodged and watched Maeva expectantly. "Yes, Junior," he answered anyway. "Some humans—"

"I know," said the boy. "Mama told me that some humans are easily flustered. Like Mister Fado!"

"Fado is fine," said Link briskly, as though Fado shouldn't have been mentioned at all. "I talked to him. But your mom's right. Some people, they're not intelligent enough to understand differences." Then, to Maeva as he rose, "We should go. I'll get Midna."

"It's all right. I'll do it," said Maeva, and set to picking up Midna. Wrapping her around the new cloth, she lowered her into the basket. When they were finished with lunch and Link sent Ooccoo Junior to Epona, they set out for the bar. Hopefully, when they returned to their companions, Telma had already sent them to the castle and Midna, aided by Princess Zelda.

They pushed past the busy townspeople, all in raincloaks, to reach Telma's Bar. Maeva ached from covering the rest of the basket with her free arm, but soon found repose in the shade of their destination's roof. The door, however, was locked.

"Bar's closed!" Telma announced from inside, knocking at the door before Link could. "Just for today, sorry!"

"Telma, it's us."

The door swung open. The swarthy woman's welcoming grin was a comfort to Maeva in the face of the odd stares they had received since entering the town, but she knew not to relax. Her hood was up, after all. "Hey, honey, come in! I just have a few friends over."

"Thanks, Telma," said Link, smiling as he lowered his hood and removed his cloak. Maeva was beginning to identify his smiles better. This was merely his polite one. "By the way, I was the one who called Epona from the stables, in case you hear about it."

"I'll keep that in mind." Telma watched the cloaked figure that followed him inside curiously. "Is that you, Maeva?" The figure nodded. "Well, you can take that off now, honey. You're indoors," she laughed.

"…Maeva received an injury since we saw each other last," Link said slowly, glancing at Maeva grimly. "She'd rather not show it."

"Scars are nothing to be ashamed of," Telma declared, voice booming, but shrugged. "But if that's how you feel."

"Thank you, Telma," said Maeva, and closed the door behind her.

"What's in the basket, honey?"

Maeva's head turned to the basket for a length of time. Then she answered, "Just goods I bought from the bazaar. For myself."

"That's nice," Telma said absentmindedly, then appeared to remember something. Glancing behind her, she motioned to four people positioned round a map spread out over a table.

The first was a brown-haired, bespectacled man with a book in his hands. The beginnings of a few wrinkles were on his forehead, but for all else he seemed youthful. His high cheekbones and posture made him look arrogant, in Maeva's opinion, but she supposed he was handsome enough.

Beside him sat an old man, lines prominent above his creased brows. Maeva found the graying hairs below his cheeks amusing. She wondered what that could be called, for it certainly wasn't a beard. He scratched his goatee with a thumb as Maeva's eyes narrowed on the triangles-within-a-triangle symbol strapped on his chest. Like the first young man and Link, his ears were pointed.

Between them stood a well-armored young woman, fair with hair a silky black – true ebony, at that – tied into two behind her ears. She wore a blank expression, and the last of their companions had the most inscrutable features of them all, for he wore a helm and did not bother to lift the visor.

"This is the Group I was telling you about," said Telma. "Say hey, everyone!"

Those at the table either nodded or waved, and Link replied with a smile. Still, when Telma moved closer to introduce them, Link cut her off and guided her to the bar instead. "Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. This'll just be quick, Telma."

Maeva knew he would ask her about the castle, and she didn't want to risk having to answer questions in case Telma became curious about what new might lie under her hood. Taking a seat next to the table on which Ralis was once laid, she set down Midna's basket and sighed. It'd become almost second nature since the encounter with Zant.

"Who might that be?"

Maeva turned her head slightly. From where she sat between the bar and the establishment's deeper interior, she could hear the whispers of Telma's friends.

"That timeless design," said the same certain voice, male, young. "Sporting the legendary look!" A laugh. Maeva suppressed a growl.

"Gutsy," said the woman, then gave a tch that made Maeva's lip curl. "Maybe he's an actor. But if he wanted to get stared at, he should've just joined the circus."

"He could be a costumer," said a wizened voice. The old man. "Although one wonders why Telma would allow him to trouble her at all. Unless he has any actual skill, that equipment will be of no use."

Maeva waited to hear the helmeted man's voice, but it was once more the young man who spoke next. "And bringing a mysterious companion who refuses to lower her hood, as though the very sight of her would cause wonder. I don't believe he's from Hyrule proper. Seems to be from the province; rather simple-minded, too, if he thinks wearing the costume makes him anything close to a hero."

Maeva wasn't certain when she'd thrown her chair back to approach them, but when she came to her senses she had already begun angrily.

"Simple-minded?" she repeated. In hindsight, she would believe she was on edge, caused by Midna's severe condition, but at the moment it was Link, and last night she said she wanted to be a friend to him, and she would be. "I know Link, and I know people like you who believe you will save Hyrule, you'll protect and heal her and that Link can do only wrong, but you're the ones who are simple-minded!

"Were the task left to you, to this – this Resistance – you're powerless! You would be nothing without Link. Even now. Link has seen, known, understood, dealt with things you can only imagine! You know nothing. And for a Resistance, you certainly do a lot of sitting around—"

Maeva paused to breathe, watch for their reactions, but there was only partial guilt in their gazes, contrary to what she expected. They were wide-eyed, brows furrowed, the young man and woman with their mouths slightly ajar, though the helmeted man simply pursed his lips. She recognized it, then, the fear. But it was diminished from what she was accustomed to, and her suspicions were confirmed when she reached for the top of her cloak and felt that it had fallen in her ramblings.

The woman spoke first. "So that's why your hood is up..."

The young man breathed. "How bizarre."

"Interesting," agreed the old man. Maeva's first thought was to glance at Link.

He appeared shocked, too, clearly more at her outburst than her appearance. Collecting himself quickly, he nodded at Telma. "Thanks again, Telma," said Link, taking Midna's basket and placing his hand on Maeva's shoulder. "We're leaving." He threw a cursory half-smile at the others in the bar. "Stay safe."

"Wait," said the young man. "What kind of—"

"Maeva, honey," Telma blinked when she saw what they were all looking at. "Are you all right? What happened?"

"Now," said Link, almost sternly, throwing on his cloak and handing Maeva the basket. His companion obeyed swiftly, walking out the door he opened and looking anywhere but Telma, though she muttered a small thanks before disappearing out the door.

Maeva released a heavy breath once Link closed the door. Sheepishly but genuinely, or at least so she liked to believe, he was grinning at her when she looked at him again. "That went well, huh?"

A smile tugged at her lips despite the situation. "I've never seen or heard you quite so rude to anybody."

"Sorry. I panicked, I guess."

Maeva didn't think he seemed panicked at all. Or perhaps she hadn't noticed – it was odd, but she was…happy? It was a long-lost, familiar happiness, the kind she'd felt in her camaraderie with Zant and Midna, and with the rest of the Nine. When getting away with as much mischief as one could was still a contest. "Well, you weren't too rude."

"Yeah?" Link's grin softened as he chuckled at her nod. "Anyway, Telma gave me this key. There's a room above the bar with a stairwell that goes directly below the castle."

Maeva gave a pleased nod and was herself surprised to find that his triumph in this didn't infuriate her. It was their triumph, after all, being closer to rescuing Midna. It sounded new in her head, but good. "Ours."

Link lifted his hood. "Sorry, what?"

"That's good," she said, and it wasn't a lie.

The place upstairs looked well-polished, but inside the walls were peeling and there were only tables and chairs, like it was a meeting place. Maeva wondered why they didn't meet there instead of at Telma's bar, which interrupted her business, but she didn't like that Group anyway and decided to leave their 'plans' be. The only other thing of note was a bookshelf, which Link pulled open to reveal darkness.

Batting away the dust trapped in the passageway, Maeva peered and saw a rocky tunnel covered in webs. It was a steep incline downward, but the drop stopped not too far ahead before leveling out. It was no 'stairwell.'

"Maeva…?"

"Midna!" exclaimed Maeva, lowering the blankets from their companion's face. "Midna, how do you feel?"

Involuntarily, Midna cringed in pain and coughed. Maeva rubbed her arm. "Cold…is Zelda…?"

"We're going to her now. It's going to be all right," Maeva insisted. Nodding weakly several times, Midna drifted off again.

Only Link could weave worry and determination into his smile and still hold her confidence. Lighting his lantern, he stood by the tunnel. "Let's go."

Bats littered the way until it opened into a large, dimly lit area with walls of castle stone, and then there were spiders. Big ones resembling the kind in the Forest Temple, and as Link sliced one open with his sword Maeva remembered the monkey who gave her the flower. That girl had accepted her, paying no heed to her markings. Then again, humans probably didn't often enter her home.

When Link finished beheading the accompanying spider, he turned and saw Maeva look up from her pouch in dismay. "What's wrong?"

"The flower," she said, lifting a withered white one for him to see. "That monkey from the Forest temple gave it to me. It's been alive since then, by way of what must have been a miracle. Until now."

"Oh," Link almost mumbled. Clearly, he said, "Well… If you want, I can pick you another one when the princess heals Midna."

"No thank you," replied Maeva, and it was quite a thought, anyway. Didn't men only give flowers to women they loved? Ilia flashed across her mind. "This was special. It was my reward for saving her."

"Maeva…" Link opened his mouth, looking as though he had something meaningful to say.

She put the flower back in her pouch anyway. "What is it?"

"…Nothing," he answered, and motioned forward. "Let's keep moving."

They were certainly under the castle, with monsters in the form of bulblins and shadows skulking about, waiting to be vanquished. Link performed that task easily while Maeva kept Midna secure. The question now was where exactly they were. She remembered overhearing Link tell their companions the story of how Midna found him in the dungeons, once, when she still found his amiability infuriating.

He professed never having been navigated by Midna to this area underground, however, and was as lost as she, who never explored the castle. Maeva wondered if Zant had known of her presence, then. It was disheartening, but she steeled herself with a glance at Midna, whose body was becoming a ghostly white, shivers now more frequent.

There were doors as high as the ceiling, but they were all blocked by collapsed pillars. Link and Maeva found open ways just a little higher than them, but those seemed to grow smaller as they went. Soon there was only a crawlway so small that Midna's basket wouldn't fit. Maeva took the imp into her arms instead and crouched down.

"Maybe I should go first," said Link. "I have the lantern."

"And I can see in the dark," said Maeva. Did he not see her eyes? "Twili, remember? Follow me."

"Right. That's why you could see in Lakebed Temple."

"Right," she muttered, entering the crawlway, Midna cradled in her left elbow. Link Pocketed the lantern and followed. Far ahead, he could see the faint gray glow of Midna's body and followed it, taking his time and making sure not to get kicked in the face.

Maeva wasn't certain how long they had been elbowing themselves forward. Her left arm ached, her right shoulder stung, and her elbows ground into the tiny bits of rock and soil scattered around the small tunnel. She felt grubby. Only the thought of Princess Zelda healing Midna kept her from lying down on that spot and telling Link they would have to rest first. And she heard running water somewhere.

Her legs were beginning to go numb when she stretched her arms out of the tunnel and felt the cold breeze blow at her face. She must have been elsewhere, because she was so startled by it that she let out a sound and kicked backward. Moving to avoid it, Link grabbed Maeva by the ankle. Maeva turned her head as far as she could, about to mutter an apology, when a thought crossed her mind.

"Link, no! The stone!"

It was too late when the water all around them carried her voice far away. Link grunted painfully, gave an abrupt yell, and then whimpered in the manner of a wolf. The bandages on Maeva's ankle loosened, the weight beneath them disappearing.

"No…" Maeva allowed herself to fall from a height the length of her hips downward, but she ignored the aching in her bones and protected Midna's head. Link fell down with her, his clothes and Pocket a heap over his small canine body. Shaking out of them, his blue eyes looked down first at his paws – and then he let out a breath. It was a familiar sound, the same one he gave when they first met. She knew now it was a sigh.

"This is terrible. Why did you touch the stone?"

Wolf-Link stared at her in confusion.

"All right," she admitted. "Perhaps this was my fault. But I told you, didn't I? I told you not to touch my ankle! It was where I kept the stone. I was certain no one would think to touch there. Of all the places…" Maeva rubbed a free hand over her face. When she opened her eyes again and Link was still staring, it was she who sighed. "You may not remember, but Zant was trying to damage you with it.

"The stone is a blunt concentration of his power. I managed to keep it away from you until Lanayru took us away…I kept it within me, so neither you nor Gale, Ooccoo, or Junior could touch it. But Zant's will, his anger, it fuels his power. It fuels the stone, and it latches onto you like…" Maeva shook her head, trying not to go off-tangent.

"I willed it away from me, but I know one of you looks into my pouch occasionally and I couldn't have you turning into a wolf or a spirit, so I kept it wrapped near my ankle…" Maeva wanted to groan. On one side, Link hardly looked guilty, so it must have been one of the other three who rummaged through her things.

Maeva groaned anyway. Link had still become a wolf. Again. And there wasn't even a Twilight of which to rid him, this time. She wondered if the light spirits could deal with such a powerful artifact of Zant's direct creation. "You shouldn't have touched it. But – can you feel the Twilight inside of you?"

Link nodded.

"Can you try to – try to push it out? Feel where it is in your being, and…collect those pieces, and push it out. Just – push it out!"

Maeva couldn't say Link wasn't trying. His body shook with concentration, wolf-eyes squeezed shut, ears lowered and tail pointed straight down, but nothing happened. When he could take no more of it, Link sighed and shook his head.

"Maybe…" Maeva gnawed on her lower lip. "Maybe Zelda will know a way."

Midna stirred. "What's…?"

"Nothing," Maeva said, patting the imp's cheek, and collected Link's clothes and boots into his Pocket before taking out the lantern. Lighting it, she handed it to the wolf resignedly. "How about this place? Did you ever come here?"

Link looked around. They were on dry land now, but before them were connecting hallways filled with water, circular pipes pumping out more and floodgates at some ends. He had been to the sewerage, swum in the dirty water and gotten rid of those pesky vermin that wanted a bite out of him, for some reason, but his mind had been completely muddled at the time. It was Midna who had known the way.

"That would be a no," Maeva muttered to herself, and stepped into the water. She reared back when she realized what she was doing, then put on the Zora helm, at the very least, for good measure. "Well, we know we're going up."

Up was a vague direction. Maeva felt as though they went around in circles, and sometimes she wanted to ask Link why he didn't remember the way from before. She bit her tongue, however, when she remembered that he could tell her she lived in the castle for months and hadn't bothered stepping out and exploring once – even if he couldn't really say that now. Come to think of it, Link had had many chances to retort to silly things she'd yelled at him for in the past. Was he really so tolerant? Now she was…guilty.

Eventually, Link sniffed out a path. He didn't know whose scent it was, but it was innately familiar, like something inside him knew it was Zelda's. It reminded him of when he saw that symbol on Zant's cloak and he knew it…he just didn't know it. He wanted to tell Maeva, or try, but right now she was only concerned with their friend in her arms.

His and the others, at least. Maeva had always acted like a subordinate to Midna, something he thought only a dynamic to their friendship, but there was something else. Something in the way Zant had referred to himself and Midna as though they were of a higher caliber than her.

He was right. They found a flight of broken circular stairs, where Maeva loudly discovered, to her delight, that she could jump more easily with less effort than before. Link wondered what she meant by that – another question added to the list. Bulblins guarded the entrance, but they were easily disposed of. Maeva found it interesting that Link was so comfortable mauling them in that form.

If they reached the princess's room through a hole in the wall before, he actually found the door this time. When they finally stood before it, Maeva and Link exchanged anxious glances, then entered. It was as dark as it always was when Maeva spent time with the Hyrulian princess.

"Zelda?"

Maeva's voice was small, even in the silence of the room. With the princess she had always felt like a young girl opening her eyes to the world for the first time. Her very presence comforted Maeva – she was like an older sister, even an aunt, someone to trust unconditionally – and that she should not be in her room brought a pounding fear to her heart.

"Maeva," came Zelda's reply. This princess would always be a paradox to her: tender with her words but at times possessing a hardened countenance, weak in her helpless condition and yet strong in all else, steadfast, and loving as a monarch ought to be but fearsome, too. What Maeva would never doubt was her wisdom; in that she would never falter. If anyone could save Midna, (if not Link,) it was this princess.

"Zelda," Maeva whispered as the princess emerged from the shadow next to her bed. She fell to one knee. It had never been a requirement, but for this occasion she felt that their difference in rank called for such a formality. Lowering the blanket, she presented Midna. "Please, heal my... Zant, he – exposed her to holy light. This is…"

Midna stirred at the mention of the only man Link hated and shook her head. "Please…" she murmured, then grunted as she forced herself to speak. "Please tell me…how do we break…the curse on them? Link…Link is the one – you need – to save your world!"

Maeva's face fell, but she kept her lips sealed when Zelda, eyebrows furrowed, cast her eyes on the wolf. The princess shook her head. "What binds him is a different magic than what first transformed him when he first passed the curtain of twilight…"

"It's Zant," explained Maeva. "His power was condensed in a single object. It was—"

"M-Maeva…" Midna's jaw shook from attempting to contain her shivers. "You can…help Link…more – more…than – anyone…"

"Don't, Midna," sobbed Maeva. It was difficult to admit earlier, but their link was weakening at a rapidly increasing rate. She didn't bother to curb her tears. Link could only nudge his head against her shoulder, giving a slight whimper. "You can't die before him! I forbid you!"

Midna gave only the semblance of a smirk. Her eyes dimmed, but she fought to keep them on Zelda. "Can you…tell them…where to find – the Mirror? Of Twilight?"

Maeva's eyes were glued to Midna, but she felt Zelda lower to her knees before them. The princess lay her hand on the imp's exposed shoulder. "Midna," she said, "I believe…I understand now just who and what you are, and why Maeva loves you so. Despite your mortal injuries, you act in our stead. These dark times are the result of our deeds, yet it is you who have reaped the penalty.

"Like you, Link…" she said, raising the back of her palm to him; it was that symbol Maeva had seen everywhere, even as an accessory on the chest of the old man at Telma's bar. The outer triangles were a dark brown, making it appear like a natural birthmark. "I have been granted special powers by the goddesses." Taking one of Midna's hands in both of hers, she bowed. "Accept this now, Midna. I pass it to you."

A bright light shone from Zelda's hand and surrounded Midna. It was almost golden, but Maeva had grown accustomed to marveling at such a shimmer around the light spirits. What made her wonder was the air that pervaded the room upon the use of Zelda's power. Ancient and yet puissant, she had only ever felt such a thing around – Zant's god, though his was fearsomely potent. Zelda's felt almost withdrawn in that she could feel it fully, but it seemed to pose no threat.

Maeva didn't realize that her charge was already shimmering in the air, floating away from her arms, until with all her energy returning like a bucket of water thrown over her head, Midna screamed, "No! Stop her, Maeva! Link!"

The princess was losing—opacity? Maeva reached out for her with a gasp. Link barked as her hands phased through a translucent shoulder, but Zelda only smiled, in the loving, wistful way she did.

In any case, Maeva didn't want to stop her. The full green was returning to Midna's skin, her markings retaking their glow. Her hair flowed freely with a fire that rivaled her true spirit. She could only say, "Thank you."

Zelda nodded. "Go," she mouthed, then the rest of her iridescent figure diffused into the darkness of the room.

"Thank you," Midna echoed after her, and had barely set her feet down when Maeva pummeled her and caught her in a tight embrace. Her wide grin fell only when she released the imp.

"Midna," she started, looking down. "I know what I said in Lakebed Temple, but…I can't stay here now."

Midna glanced around, too, before meeting her eyes with a small smile. "If Link doesn't have a problem with you coming along…I don't either."

Link blinked, having been engrossed in their exchange. So many questions. Nevertheless, he inclined his head. Maeva beamed before a black thing appeared between them: Midna's Fused Shadow piece. "I kept it for you. Although…we must now find a new way to defeat Zant." Then, sighing again, she turned to their canine companion. "I'm sorry you're stuck in that form.

"If Zelda with her ancient power couldn't help you…" Maeva clicked her tongue. "Then neither can Lanayru or any of the light spirits. I've little knowledge of your light realm lore save for the one Hero, but maybe…Telma knows something."

Midna returned to her seat on Link's back. To his surprise, she didn't bop his head with her fist. He wasn't certain if it was because she was actually floating or because she spoke with none of the contempt she once carried, but Maeva was only perched lightly. Her voice was calm when she repeated, "Telma? You don't even like her."

"Maybe, but it was thanks to her that we were able to bring you to Zelda." Maeva paused respectfully for the princess. "I can think of a reason for Link's 'disappearance.' But if Telma might know of anything that might banish the evil that has overcome him…then I will ask her."

Maeva caught Link staring at her through her peripherals and knew he was thinking about her eyes, if she could think of a reason for them. Midna only watched her. "Are you sure?"

"It is the only way," she affirmed, encouraged by Midna's new, pleasant demeanor. "And…I can't hide it forever, can I?"

"Right. This power Zelda imbued in me – it's given me more strength. I can appear in this realm without pain!" With a wave of her arm, a portal appeared on the floor. "Why she never used it is beyond my understanding. That princess…"

"Had her reasons. Maybe they all do," suggested Maeva. Midna shrugged her assent before patting gently between Link's ears. With a step forward, they disappeared from the castle.

The portal led them to one right outside the castle town. Link and Midna had encountered shadow beasts guarding one during their short trip to Hyrule proper to collect the light insect the latter had seen near Telma's bar, and now served their purposes. When the portal pieced them back together, Maeva yelped and pulled up her hood. The rain persisted, but she only shrugged at it. There was little time to give the dark clouds meaning when it was up to her to find a way to save Link.

With renewed hope, Maeva maneuvered through the castle town, Link drenched as he trotted by her side, Midna hidden in his shadow. People screamed at the initial sight of him, but their fears were abated when they saw her cloaked figure walking closely with him. They were so glad to see him 'tamed' that they barely gave her identity a second thought.

As they passed the town, a familiar orange passed Maeva's peripherals. Stifling her gasp with a hand over her mouth, she saw that Hyrule castle was encased in Zant's twilight. "When…did that happen?"

Link wanted to say that Zant must have exerted more effort on where the princess resided just in case they came along, but as it was he could only raise his eyes to her and shake his head, then lower them quickly when the raindrops blurred his vision. He wasn't sure if she thought the same; she seemed only to steel herself and move forward.

When they reached the roof under the bar, Midna asked, "Do you know what you're going to tell that woman?"

Removing her cloak, Maeva nodded, clenched her right fist, and knocked thrice.

"We're closed! Just for today," came Telma's reply.

"Telma, it's me," repeated Maeva.

The door opened slowly this time, but Telma's smile remained as bright. "Maeva, honey. I didn't think you'd be back so soon."

"Thank you, Telma." Maeva stepped into the bar. She wasn't certain what time of the day it was anymore, mid-afternoon, probably, but Telma's four friends were still in their positions. The girl had taken a seat, too. Link sauntered inside and shook his wet fur beside them, eliciting groans from the two youths his age, before returning to her side like a faithful hound.

Maeva's nerves were almost assuaged. She reminded herself that she was…brave…for standing before them like this, and tried to ignore the examining glances of Telma's friends.

For her part, Telma did her best not to stare, but it was only natural for her to ask. "Care to explain what's happening?"

Maeva took a deep breath. "Link and I met Zant on our way here, from Lake Hylia. This," she motioned to her face, "was his doing."

Telma reached for her shoulder. "Honey…"

"No way," the girl across the room gaped. "You met Zant?"

"What was he like?" asked the young man, leaning over his seat.

"Isn't it enough that you look upon me, see what he has wrought?" Maeva demanded with a frown, but she was guilty at her own words. What he had wrought was only her true unveiling, after all. In a way, she had done it to herself. But they didn't stand a chance against Zant, so why bother asking? It irritated her that they thought they could change a thing.

He inclined his head. "…Where is Link?" he asked after a stretch. "I – I'm Shad, by the way – I wanted to apologize. For the ribbing I gave him this morning. Telma told us all you've been up to – you're rather formidable! We had no idea you were the friends who helped her cross the gorge."

"Ashei," the girl introduced herself. "Sorry I was nasty the other day, too. You're both different than I thought you'd be. This is Auru, and that's—"

"Please save your apologies for Link," Maeva interrupted. She appreciated that they took the effort to do so, but it was enough that they apologized at all. And while she didn't mind the thought of delivering messages to Link, she needed to ask Telma so they could leave already. "He left town not long after we parted from you."

That explained Link's disappearance for them, but they were still bug-eyed at the wolf beside her. He was difficult to ignore, she supposed, especially since he'd sprinkled them all with rainwater. The helmeted man seemed to stiffen at the sight of him, especially.

"This wolf is Link's familiar, whom he saved during one of the…attacks," she explained. "He appears every now and then to join us, though he seemed to have elected to stay with me while Link has gone to find some sort of…cure. For evil."

Shad appeared to ease up. "Cure for evil? That sounds rather…"

"There's no other way to put it," Maeva snapped. She couldn't exactly think of a better description. "An acquaintance of ours has been tainted by Zant's evil – the kind that transforms from within – and we must purify him. I came only to ask if you knew anything, Telma. I'd hate for Link to be out searching blindly."

Moving about the bar almost uneasily, Telma gave a long 'hmm.' "Auru," she said, pouring him a drink, "any ideas?"

The old man nodded. "There is a sword of legend used by the Hero of lore. They call it the blade of evil's bane, the Master Sword, able to vanquish even the most terrible of sorcerers."

Maeva nodded her head vigorously. "That's exactly what we need. Where can it be found?"

Shad snorted, then tried to take it back by replacing it with a tiny smirk. "If we knew that, it would hardly be a legend, now, would it?"

Clearly, he still thought Link was some sort of costumer. With all his deeds, Link was unmistakably the hero chosen by the goddesses! Shad seemed like a smart young man; he should have been able to connect the blade with him, but perhaps she'd thought too highly of his knowledge of lore. "You have no idea what you're talking about," she muttered, but said out loud, "We need information. Not your ridicule."

Maeva almost grinned when Link accentuated this with a snarl.

"Whoa, there," said Ashei, standing up to block Shad, even though Link hadn't really moved from his spot beside Maeva. "It's said the sword is in the Faron province, deep in the woods in some sacred grove, yeah? But that's obviously just legend."

"Obviously." Maeva slipped into her cloak. "I should go. Thank you all for the help."

"So – what are you going to do about your friend?" Ashei called after her.

"We'll handle it," she shrugged and moved, about to make a fine exit, in her opinion, when she opened her mouth. It always started with that, she thought to herself glumly. "Come now, Link."

"The wolf's name is Link?" asked Telma, freezing her in her tracks.

Squeezing her eyes shut and berating herself for her carelessness, Maeva answered without facing them. "…Yes. He followed Link around so much that we decided to name the wolf after him. He's intelligent and responds to it well enough." She tilted her head at him. "Aren't you?"

Link licked Maeva's knuckles, and she prayed they would believe it.

"Well, then, best regards to the true Link," said Shad.

"Indeed," Auru's voice boomed. "Apologies for our rudeness."

Maeva concealed her relief by taking a last glance of feigned scrutiny at them. In truth, she could still feel sharply the difference between her eyes and theirs. Still, she thought it enough for now to simply show them at all. "Link is a kind human. I'm certain he will forgive you."

At that, the helmeted man opened his mouth, finally, but caught Maeva's quick eyes and promptly closed it. When he continued in his silence, she inclined her head and left the bar.

It dawned on her that she always did so anxiously. Her head was throbbing when she came out of there, and Maeva allowed herself to crouch and finally sit beside Link. When her breathing was in order, she looked at him. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

Link shook his head.

Maeva imitated the gesture absentmindedly. "Did you really mean to snarl at Shad?"

Link grinned in reply – though he looked that way normally, she supposed, when ever he bared his teeth – and licked her face. Maeva wrinkled her nose but did not protest noisily, wondering if he did that on purpose. Sparing a slight smile for his efforts, she rose. "To Faron woods, then."

"Right," said Midna, jumping out of Link's shadow and leaning against her shoulder. "For the blade of evil's bane!"

---

As it turned out, Midna's power was still limited in her imp form. The only portals she could take them to were ones they had reformed from Zant's twilight. In any case, Gale, Ooccoo, and Junior were overjoyed to see Midna back in good form, though Link was a surprise for them, as they had never seen him as a wolf.

Link clearly still possessed human thought, as he bared his teeth at the sight of them in the Inn and barked as if in amusement when they screamed and Gale tried to hurl him away with a terrible gust. It all ended in fits of laughter when Maeva moved to stand between them, attempting to tell the fairy it was only their companion, and the shape of her hair became reminiscent of their time in the Forest Temple. (Although, Maeva didn't laugh quite so much as she did scowl, especially at Epona, who gave a humorous whinny when he saw her next.)

Their party arrived at Ordon springs, but decided to regroup in Link's house upon Maeva's request. They had no idea what obstacles lay in the path to the blade, after all, and she wanted no repeats of what happened with Zant.

"I don't like this," muttered Gale. They sat around the dinner table, light beaming down from the open roof. Maeva sincerely hoped it wouldn't rain here. "I don't like this thing where we split up and you three do all the work. I didn't even like that you went to the castle without telling us."

"It was for the better," said Maeva. "We spared you from crawling through dirty passages."

"We're all going this time," Gale insisted.

Ooccoo bobbed her head in agreement. "We are on an adventure together, dear."

Maeva sighed. Did they really want to risk their lives? The Goron Mines and the Lakebed Temple hadn't been dangerous enough; this time, Zant had made known his intention to destroy them and could be hunting for them as they spoke. She could still grow stronger – couldn't they wait until then to come along? It couldn't be her way anymore; to allow friends to come to harm.

"Yeah," said Ooccoo Junior, perched on top of her head. "We should enjoy our time with each other while we can! Like you said, right Maeva? In an adventure?"

It only vaguely came to mind. They were in Hyrule Field then, yes – before King Bulblin came and threatened Kakariko Village. "Yes, but—"

"You're welcome to go," said Midna, patting Maeva's shoulder when the girl turned to her with a meaningful look. "Ooccoo and Gale make good distractions, and Junior's teleportation is always useful."

"Right!" Ooccoo beamed. "So you see, Maeva, it's hardly your choice."

"Yes, if we're going to be a team, we're going to have to make decisions together!" said Gale.

Maeva rolled her eyes. "I see I have no choice." But a smile tugged on her lips. A team – it had been a lifetime since she was part of one. And she liked them. Their dynamics reminded her of that in the Nine. There was the older group, Siv and Hepfi. That was Ooccoo and Midna now. The mid-group was always larger: Saemi, Hidram, Rabor, Midna, her lover. She should have been part of them, but she'd always fit in better with him and Midna and was the child in their group. So it was her, Rell, and Zelk in the youngest category. Now it was Ooccoo Junior, while she and Gale made up the mid-group. Gale's words at Lakebed spoke as if she were much, much older, but Maeva saw her as one who thought as one younger in years, like them.

She was still confused about Link. He was very childish at times – childlike was the correct term, she supposed – but many times he commanded their party as though he were above their clearly older members.

"Any thoughts, Link?" asked Midna, peering down at the wolf from Midna's shoulder. She was teasing.

Link's front paws cradled the side of his head. If Maeva were asked to interpret, she would say he looked nearly depressed. In retrospect, they hadn't really minded him since they arrived at Ordon Springs and he showed them the spare key to his door. How had he climbed the house?

Ooccoo Junior only giggled. "Cheer up, Link! You'll be back in no time, just like Midna!"

Link bared his teeth briefly in a smile before padding off to the bathroom.

"He's grown accustomed to leading," said Midna, an understanding expression on her face. "Being reduced to one who can hardly communicate must be crippling to his confidence."

"I doubt it," Maeva remarked, but her eyes lingered on the bathroom door.

He came out again after a while, but the ladies and Ooccoo Junior had already branched into another topic of discussion. Link was pleasantly surprised to see Maeva chatting with them, no matter if it was only about the fashions of their homeland. Midna and Maeva offered nothing past a choice between wearing skin-tight clothing or loose harem pants, which the latter clearly preferred, but fairies apparently were very color-conscious and Link couldn't help but drift off in boredom.

"LIIIIIIIIIIINK!"

Maeva jumped. "Who's that? Fado?" She glanced immediately at Link, who padded up to her and shook his head vigorously.

"You'll have to acknowledge him or raise suspicion," said Midna, ushering their companions into silence.

Climbing the ladders of Link's house, Maeva peered down at Link's friend through the window beneath the roof. "Oh," she said loudly. "Hello, Fado."

Apparently, he couldn't see her eyes, because he gave only a wave and, after a silence that denoted surprise, replied loudly enough, "…Hi there. Maeva. Is – Is Link home?"

"No, he isn't."

"Then, uh…what are you doing at his place?" Fado scratched his head. "I saw that Epona was home an' all, so I thought…"

"Oh," she muttered, but still in a shout. "I brought back Epona. He and I parted ways a little while ago, so I came here to return her and wait for Link's return."

"Oh," said Fado. "Oh. Well. Did he say when he was comin' back?"

Maeva gave an exaggerated shrug, in case Fado couldn't see her. It was cloudy, but the sky was still bright and he squinted up at her with some difficulty. "Your guess is as good as mine, I'm afraid."

Fado frowned and was silent, like he was in deep thought. Maeva didn't perceive him as the kind to go through such a process, but she didn't mind as long as he stayed away. "Well, goodbye!" she said, waving, then jumped to the first level with a heavy sigh. "I'm glad that's over."

"Wait!"

"Doesn't sound like it," remarked Gale. The others turned their heads to the door, on which there was a heavy knocking.

"We should hide," suggested Ooccoo.

"To the window!" exclaimed Junior. When Midna nodded in agreement, they flew above. Link stayed behind one of his tables.

"Maeva?" Fado called out.

Reluctantly, she stood by the door. "Yes?"

"Uh…" The tension between them was thicker than the door. Maeva hated sharing common friends with people she hardly knew, or who seemed uncomfortable with her. Well, this was a first—but she disliked it already. "Can I come in?"

Maeva shook her head as though he could see it. "Um, no."

He sighed. "I guess I can understand that…but I – I want you to know, I thought about what Link said. So – so when he comes back, tell 'im to come over. Please. Tell him that…Maeva, I'm all right with you shacking up with my buddy. I mean, he's always been the smart one outta us two, but…he can't hide it from me. Just wish he was honest, y'know? But…sorry about what I said."

Maeva gave the door a confused look. "What are you talking about? I'm not living with Link. We're only traveling together. That is – we were."

A small chuckle. "Whatever you say. Listen, just take care of him, all right? You're—well, Link's girl is probably the luckiest little lady in the world, because he'll take care of you even better. Anyway, that's all I wanted to say. I'll come over again when he gets home…"

When she didn't reply, Fado thought glumly that she must be harder to please than he originally thought – until the door swung open, taking him by such surprise that he backed and fell off the ledge.

"I am not Link's girl!" the girl gasped. "Oh – are you all right?"

Groaning, Fado looked nothing like 'all right.' Link's concern for strangers was rubbing off on Maeva. Still, he painfully held his bottom, wincing, saying, "No, really, you can tell me—whoa!"

His eyes had opened, looked up to Maeva standing by the ledge. She covered her own instinctively before groaning. Why did she always end up revealing herself? Although she might as well stop him from saying anything to the rest of the village. Leaping from the ledge, she landed before him in case he tried to run, even if she had a feeling he might be able to bundle past her given his size.

A heavy panting that almost resembled laughter emerged from the door. 'Get back inside,' mouthed Maeva, pointing firmly at the door, but Link only stared down at them.

Fado took no notice of him. "What happened to your face?" he asked, gaze lowering. "And fingers!"

Link found his way to Maeva's side and barked at his friend, who yelled even more in surprise.

"It's the wolf! You're friends with the wolf?" he cried.

"Stop!" she scolded him, at least in Fado's eyes. The wolf obeyed, but bared his teeth at her. Link was, of course, smiling. Maeva explained, "No, the wolf became a friend to Link when he saved him from...the man who kidnapped the children, and did this to me." The truth might have been too complicated for him; she couldn't be sure, and she wanted to get rid of him as soon as possible if she were being honest. "That man was the reason Link and I went our separate ways."

Fado gave a long "oh." Standing up and dusting himself off, he smiled down at her apologetically. She forgot that he could cast a shadow over her. "I'm sorry. I tend to overreact. Don't they hurt?"

If she was apprehensive towards anything, it was the clear concern in his tone. "What are you talking about?"

"Your eyes. And fingers."

Then again, he was supposed to be Link's best friend. Perhaps they shared the same virtue. "Not really. They're still—mine."

Fado shrugged. "If you say so."

Maeva narrowed her eyes at him. "I am not Link's girl. It cannot be gainsaid, Fado. We've only just become friends!"

"Then why did he defend you like that?"

"Defend me like what?"

"Well, I said that you were…" Fado paused. Link knew by the expression on his face that he knew he'd be incriminating himself if he spoke any more. Sometimes his friend actually thought before he spoke, and he was glad for those moments. "Uh, never mind. You're friends."

"Yes," said Maeva, almost gratefully. "I hope you can keep my arrival a secret. Hanch tends to overreact about me. Moreso with the wolf and my new markings."

Here, Fado let loose a burst of laughter. "Yeah, he freaks out a lot. He'd probably faint, you know."

"He might have when I first arrived," said Maeva, smiling a little. "Were he not so worried for his daughter."

"Yeah," Fado grinned, but it faded soon into a solemn look. "Maeva…were you guys close to finding Ilia?"

Maeva contemplated telling him. She finally remembered the wolf beside her and glanced at him for help, but he was far away. "No," she answered. "We were thrown off our trail when the man who did this to me attacked us, causing our separation. But once he returns here, we'll find her. We'll bring her back."

Fado sighed. He opened his mouth as if to speak, looking at Maeva determinedly, but his face fell and all he said was, "All right. You take care now."

"Same to you, Fado," said Maeva, blinking when he thumped her on the back with a strong hand. She took no offense. When he and Link exchanged such gestures, she knew it was a display of friendship, but it shocked her that he believed them familiar enough to do such a thing to her. It was nice.

As soon as Fado disappeared down the hill for the village, Maeva discovered that it was easier to face Link in his wolf form. Easier to forget why she felt worse in his presence. "What did you say to Fado to make him think we…?" Maeva's face warmed, and was thankful when when the Ooccoo Junior and the others appeared with a pop. "Never mind."

"What did he want?" asked Midna, sitting on Maeva's head. "I heard him scream."

"Humans are awfully jumpier than before," Ooccoo remarked. "Don't you think so?"

"I have no basis for comparison, but yes, they do tend to scream at the sight of me. For their own reasons – which I can handle," Maeva said, more to Midna than anyone else. The imp nodded in acknowledgment, granting her a small smile. It was more than they had shared since Zant's betrayal. "In any case, we've rested enough. To Faron Woods, shall we?"

Midna's portal brought them to the the edge of Faron Woods. She tried finding a way through to the Forest Temple itself, but her newfound power had its limits. Midna sensed that she could only pull them to areas they had fought shadow beasts in the past, where they had converted Zant's red portals to green.

They arrived at the clearing near Trill's shop, where Midna had sent Maeva in search of the missing bridge before. Maeva dreaded seeing the blue bird, not for his voice since she had seen that in their last meeting he, too, had his troubles as they all did, small it might be compared to theirs. She simply groaned at the thought of having to explain why her fingers looked like they had been dipped in permanent green ink or why a strip of the same color ran from one tip of her ear to the other like a band, or, her favorite: why her eyes were now a crimson red.

Well, that was an overreaction. He shrieked before he even saw her.

That was incorrect. It sounded as if the screaming had filled the forest even before their arrival. The clip-clop of horses, too. Without exchanging unnecessary glances, their party of five rushed past Trill's empty shop until they reached the source of the din: a figure as tall as a human woman crying out merged with a chittering gray monkey and the loudest blue bird. Its fleshy pink arms batted away at monsters with spherical heads and faces painted into perpetual smiles. They wore tattered capes and arms and legs that clattered against each other like horse hooves in their helpless dangling – like puppets.

Link and Maeva were the quickest to action, the wolf mauling their arms from their bodies – wooden, really wooden – and the girl knocking their heads off with her staff. They were unlike any creature she had seen before. Even the shadow beasts, their people forced to kill against their own will, moved their muscles like other beings, but these flailed around almost humorously. Maeva doubted they were alive at all.

But the creatures didn't die; they simply put themselves back together and vaulted into the trees above, willfully disappearing.

"Gracious, what were those?" asked Ooccoo.

"They looked like toys, mama," said Ooccoo Junior, settling on Maeva's head. "Oh, hi, monkey!"

Maeva no longer tried to shake the cheering female monkey that was using her back as a perch again, picking up Junior and putting him on her head so that she would be free to pick through Maeva's hair. The girl wondered what she was doing, if this was a sort of hello for the monkey, when she remembered.

"I'm sorry," said Maeva, turning to her side to face the monkey, who stared at her in confusion. She still smelled like a forest animal, but it was a stench Maeva welcomed from her. "The flower wilted."

The monkey chittered quietly before leaping off into the trees, a curious Junior still on her head. Maeva thought to call to her, wondering if she had hurt the girl's feelings, but her disappearance allowed her to turn to the rest of the puppet victims. It hadn't been a creature; it was the monkey, Trill, and Uli cornered together by the gangly monsters.

"Oh, thank you, thank you!" Trill chirped on Link's head. Midna was in Ooccoo's shadow. "I was so worried for the girls! How nice to see you again!"

While Oocooo – who hadn't noticed her son running off with a monkey – exchanged pleasantries with her fellow winged-creature, Maeva turned to Uli, who stared at the lot of them with a polite smile until she made eye contact with Maeva and realized, upon closer inspection, that she was not at all wearing a band over her red eyes.

"Th-Thank you. Maeva," she said. Mayor Bo had informed her of Link's nonhuman friends, but nothing about Maeva. "Are you… all right? What happened to you?"

The genuine concern in her eyes almost spooked Maeva. But she supposed that Uli would be kinder, being rounder; being a mother. She understood now why Colin was so brave. Maeva had no opinion on the father, Rusl, hardly knowing him, but watching Uli's reaction was heartwarming. Her heart was Colin's. Here was a human aware of the terrible things befalling her realm and yet she welcomed a girl whose appearance was joined with the loss of a sword and shield in the village; the quick departure of a beloved husband. Perhaps in her indulgence of self-pity she had given their race too little credit for their own kindness.

Even though, thought Maeva, the already perfunctory story about the man who took the children and gave her the 'scars' and the 'paint' spouting from her mouth, she had only ever told them lies.

"… May I?" said Uli, eyes brimming with tears. Maeva allowed the woman to touch her true skin. Her way was not of fear, as in the humans she had met previously, or as Telma's friends and their morbid interest, but – it was Zelda's way. Compassion. "You are very brave, Maeva."

"Not at all," was her automatic response. There was truth in that, at least. Still the kindness from someone other than the princess and the hero made her uncomfortable and she added, "You must be wondering about the wolf. Link saved him and it has followed us infrequently ever since. It, too, was attacked by the beasts."

"Oh," remarked Uli, tilting her head curiously at Link. She did a double-take.

Maeva saw nothing of interest. Except that the wolf was a human in truth, of course. "What is it?"

"N—othing," answered Uli, hand on her stomach. "I thought for a moment that he…that it…nothing. It must be the shock toying with my mind."

"All right," Maeva immediately agreed to dismiss whatever it was she noticed, hoping the woman was not as perceptive as Princess Zelda.

Uli sighed. "I didn't know the Faron Woods had become so dangerous. Rusl used to take me out here for walks."

"Really?" Maeva could not imagine the forest as anything but goblin-infested, but then she had come here in dark times.

Uli nodded. "Maybe I shouldn't have gone without my husband. He's been so busy at the castle town…"

Maeva wanted to know what he was doing there and why they hadn't seen him in their time at Hyrule, but there were pressing matters at hand, like how she was beginning to suspect that the twitching she saw from the corner of her eye was a certain wolf cringing at their blue friend's wonderful voice. Small, kindly doses; that was Trill.

"I am certain your husband will return soon," she said, earnestly. With a child coming soon, how ever could Rusl stay away? She remembered when Siv and Hepfi could hardly leave each other alone in their desire for a child. Now Maeva was happy they had never conceived, or it would have opened its eyes to a crumbling world. One Link would save with her, but then who would care for it?

"I should return home, too," Uli thought aloud. "Won't you come, and your friends, too?"

Maeva was thankful she had the grace not to ask for their purpose there. "No, we have business here."

"All right, then," smiled Uli. "Rusl has heard from the children, by the way. Malo had a letter sent—they told him about the kindness you and your friends accorded them, even if only Link had truly any reason to save them. I must thank you."

"It's nothing, really," replied Maeva. Now that was a lie – it meant everything to her to receive gratitude. But it was embarrassing to show desire for it, she saw now. How naïve and petty Link must have thought her for it before. "Please have a safe journey home."

"I'll accompany you!" said Trill, flying over to Uli's shoulder. Link's squinted wolf eyes returned to their normal size, his general posture relaxing until the chirping monkey swang in from the trees with Junior.

"Look what we got, mama!" giggled the oocca.

The monkey landed before Link, fixing a green flower onto his ear. Maeva received another white flower. Then the monkey picked through her hair, nearly tugging at the strands. When Maeva protested noisily, the female grabbed her by the face instead and rubbed her thumbs on Maeva's cheeks, right below her true skin.

"What are you doing?" gasped Maeva, attempting to grab the hands of the monkey, who seemed to have understood that this was not to be done. Chirping in disappointment, the the female pat Maeva fondly on the head before leaping off and climbing Uli's back, slipping a pink flower that matched hers into her hair. She waved goodbye to their party with Uli and Trill before slipping back into the shadow of the forest.

"That was odd," Maeva shook her head. "She didn't try that the last time."

"I think she likes you," said Ooccoo Junior.

Link's gaze stretched after the woman who had been a parental figure to him after his mother's passing. Gale caught it easily. "You want to follow them, don't you?"

"I think the monkey can handle it," said Midna, truthfully, as she reappeared. It was the monkey's wild smacking that had deterred the puppets from harming Uli earlier, from what she had seen. "She seemed less mad than the others the last time we were here."

Link nodded in acquiescence. Maeva craned her neck to stare up at the trees warily, still wondering what those puppets had been, but when they didn't descend arms-a-flailing, she went to stand before the natural bridge to the Forest Temple instead.

"Where would a sacred grove lie here?" she asked, looking over the chasm below. Not there, she hoped. Peculiar that there might be a forest below Faron Woods covered in mist; or perhaps it was already the end of this realm. "Do you think we missed something in the Forest Temple?"

Link shook his head vigorously, padding over to a tree stump right over the chasm, and jumped up and down. Every so often he jerked his head in the direction of the chasm.

Midna exchanged a look with Maeva. "Don't tell me…"

"He may be trying to tell us something," nodded Maeva.

Midna sat on Maeva's shoulder, leaning an elbow on her head. "I'm not partaking of this again."

"I love this game!" Gale tittered. "Is it… high in the trees above us? The sacred grove?"

"Or," Ooccoo suggested, "it's down below the mist over there! Yes?"

"We need to find a better way of communicating," muttered Midna. Maeva could only laugh in agreement at Link's deadpan reaction.

Ooccoo Junior floated over the mist and exclaimed, "I know, I know!"

Next to the natural bridge to Forest Temple were a set of tree stumps almost out of sight because of the forest's shadow. He flew past all of them until he disappeared into the mountain face far ahead of them. "There's something there!" he said when he returned, wings flapping furiously in excitement. Link barked appreciatively. "We can move by tree stump!"

"Lead the way, Junior," said Midna, and the four women and Link rounded together for his convenience. The mountain face had a wide tunnel leading to a sunlit area briefly free of trees, and few obstacles like spinning bridges from the Forest Temple and great swinging tree trunks that might knock them off narrow paths, but Gale and Ooccoo easily transported them past those. The party soon found themselves wandering into a forest again.

The grove was almost entirely covered in trees, so much so that they had almost missed the entrance if not for Midna's easy perception of an odd light coming in from one section of the forest. The place seemed walled with trees and leaves, thick enough to block out the sun entirely, but instead of darkness, the grove was illuminated in a bluish-green glow, giving it an unearthly beauty.

Maeva felt cut off from the outside world as soon as they brushed past the curtain of leaves into it, not only because of the light but the jarring distortion of sound. Chirping birds sounded miles away, as though the treetops themselves were the heavens, and leaves rustled distantly; there was no wind around them, only a perpetual calm. Running water seemed a little closer, and it helped that the relaxing smell of it surrounded them, but from where they stood she could see nothing. Only trees and a small slab of white rock.

It looked a lot like the one that brought Link to that holy cliff where she cried, once, and Link howled and sang with his golden brother. "Is this the one that takes you far away?" she asked him.

Link stared at it curiously and shook his head no. Upon closer inspection, Maeva noticed the triangles within the triangle, that constant in Hyrule town, engraved on the slab.

"This really must be a holy place," said Gale when she saw Maeva peering at it, "if the symbol of the Triforce is here."

"Is that its name?" asked Maeva.

"Yes," replied Gale. "It's a long story, but the Triforce was created by the goddesses to protect their creations. It's said that when one who possesses great wisdom, courage, and power in equal parts takes the Triforce, they can have anything they desire. In a time long past, an evil sorcerer attempted to take it, but he was a man of greed and only the Triforce of Power answered to his call.

"The Triforce of Wisdom and Courage went to two others, seeking to remedy the situation. You see, its parts, when separated, only go to those who most embody the quality. The sorcerer desired power most of all the creatures in the realm, so his was Power. The legendary Hero of Time who defeated him carried Courage. I think Link has it, too."

Maeva recalled their last visit to Hyrule Castle. "Then Zelda must have had Wisdom. She did say that she was granted special powers by the goddesses – and she bore the Triforce on the back of her palm!" she turned to Midna. "It means she used her power to revive you."

Midna bowed her head in memory of the Hyrulian princess. "If that's true, then Zelda honored me more than any of us knew."

Before anyone else could provide input, Link tilted his head back and howled. He didn't know why himself, other than that he knew what to do. It was one of those things again. If Gale was right, then it wasn't him who knew it at all. It was that Triforce – he had always wondered what that shape was at the back of his left hand – and that meant… did that mean the Hero of Time was with him? Was it why Zelda felt like a long-lost sister?

The party heard a rumbling in the distance. Still it felt like a part of the grove, like notes that added mystery to a harmony. They saw soon enough that a path had cleared where a great wall of trees once stood like bars unmoving. In the way was a small thing that couldn't be taller than Malo, wearing a pointy hat and shoes and colorful, tattered pieces of cloth, a horn raised to his mouth.

"Look mama!" said Junior.

"What is a child doing here?" Midna frowned.

"Young man," Ooccoo called cautiously, but as soon as she fluttered near him, the child blew the horn, disturbing the peace of the grove so that it seemed like the trees reacted in anger, refusing to let the sound pass them and therefore echoing it like a chaotic summons.

It was. The boy was the master of the tree-puppets that flailed their rickety arms at them.

"What in the world!" cried Ooccoo. Maeva knocked off the head of two with her fists by instinct – she had already been hit twice in the shoulder – and reached for her staff, but Link had already taken them apart.

"Wait, Junior!" yelled Gale, spinning after him. In the chaos, the young ooccoo had chosen to chase the child. With Midna yelling orders on his back, Link took no time to rest, bounding after them. She was the only clear sound in the grove.

"Hold on," said Maeva, planting Ooccoo firmly on her head, and headed for the sound of Link's constant barking through the twisting trees that seemed to trap them. Even then she wondered why there were only structures in the twilight realm, no burning mountains or forests or freezing lakes. That was easily answered, of course – why would the light spirits trap them in a world as glorious as this as punishment? If only her parents could catch a glimpse of even just Ordon, the most homely village in the realm. And the Nine. Saemi was the great romantic and would have loved it.

Suddenly Ooccoo's claws were ripped from her scalp. Maeva yelled in unison with the woman, taking her staff, and hurled it through the puppet that managed to sneak up on them. Sheathing her weapon, she took Ooccoo into her arms. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, dear," said Ooccoo, touching her head with her wing. "We oocca have thick skulls, you know, nothing to be worried about. Thank you."

"It's nothing. Let's find the others," said Maeva. It was hardly a task, completed as soon as they found a portion of the woods with a small pond. Link leapt into it, paddling under a tunnel, and Maeva put on the Zora helm in pursuit.

They came out into a waterfall climbing to a sunnier area of the grove, Link, Gale, and Midna paused next to them. Ahead was a wall of concrete out of place. Ooccoo Junior blinked in and out of sight as he followed the child around the highs and lows of the area until finally the concrete was revealed as an illusion and dissipated into the air.

Down below the wall were ruins of an old structure covered in dirt and carpeted by leaves. The child waited for them there on the stump of an old pillar, blowing that noisy horn. Ooccoo Junior spun round, bringing them to the child's level. Puppets fell around them.

"Where are we going?" asked Junior, coming close to the child's face, completely unaware that his friends and mother were the only reason he wasn't rammed into a tree. He cried out when the child blew the horn in his face – not out of spite but because his latest puppets had been destroyed by the rest of the party again.

"That hurt!" Junior yelled. "Stop it!" With a deciding ram, he knocked the child off the stump. The child looked at him curiously, then heartily laughed. Another wall behind him cleared. Rolling into the leaves with the same grin on his face, he faded from few.

Link was certain he heard somebody say, it's nice to see you again.

"Hey! Where did you go, Skull Kid?" Junior called out. There was no reply.

"Skull Kid?" asked Maeva, coming up beside their party's youngest member.

"He said that was what they called him. Didn't you hear him, Maeva?"

"I didn't," said Gale. "That was bizarre. And we know bizarre, I think."

The rest murmured in agreement while Junior sighed. The cleared path led out of the stillness of the grove into a sunlit ruin. Maeva supposed it was of Hylian make, but what did she know of architecture? Only two great statues were left of whatever civilization might have lain here once. They were tall, broad shouldered and big-bodied, resembling no familiar creature but themselves.

A temple behind them with the Triforce stamped on the center appeared untouched by time as well, but from whence they approached, Maeva could see no entrances. Where she might have expected a door under an archway, there waited only a wall.

Maeva didn't realize they had stepped on the symbol until she could no longer feel Ooccoo's claws on her hair, or the flapping of Junior's little wings. The earth rumbled, knocking Maeva to her knees. Before her, the path to the statues had broken off from the earth into blocks hovering over a black chasm beneath her whose depths she couldn't see. To her right, Link struggled to rise.

Just as they both stood, wolf and girl exchanging confused glances, an unseen force hauled Maeva back and forth like claws around her right shoulder, tearing her apart, until she fell back on her posterior and the shocked exclamations of the others surrounded her. Her arm was so painful that her vision drowned in white sparks.

It had felt like slamming into ice and rising out of a pool of magma instead. "What was that?" she groaned, curling into herself. She thought she might be foolishly crying again, but it was only cold sweat and the heat bearing down on them.

"You tell me," said Midna, turning her over gently. At the imp's touch, the pain seemed to dissipate. "You disappeared with Link. Did you go to that snowy training ground? Are you all right?"

"It wasn't—" Maeva turned around, looking for Link, but Midna held her back by the ankle.

"Don't go near there," Midna warned. It was an impermeable wall of some unknown substance, and she, Oocoo, Junior and Gale had been attempting to cross it for the past minutes with little variation in results. "You'll only get pushed back. What happened?"

"We have to go back for Link," Maeva insistently shook her head. "There were blocks over the darkness and the statues stomped their spears. It didn't make sense…"

"You don't make sense," sighed Gale. "Sit down."

"What about Link?"

"It's understandable to worry about him, dear, but he is a chosen Hero," offered Ooccoo. "If he had failed, we would know by now."

"I'm not worried," muttered Maeva. "I trust him. I was just wondering."

"Okay," accepted Gale, though none of them quite believed her. "Now tell us what happened."

Maeva wasn't certain how much time she spent explaining what she saw, but eventually resigned to her fate of waiting on Link to solve whatever problem had arisen. The five of them sat in a circle, discussing their recent adventures and expectantly glancing back at the barrier on occasion, though they never touched the subject of Zant's betrayal. Gale, Ooccoo, and her son knew to wait for their two companions to bring it up themselves.

"If Link takes the Master Sword here," said Oocoo, pacing on her little legs around her spot, "what is our plan?"

"We need to look for the Mirror of Twilight," Maeva answered immediately, glancing at Midna for support. The imp nodded. "Only through it can we return to our realm and confront Zant."

"You want to go back that monster?" gasped Ooccoo Junior.

"We have to," said Midna. "While Zant lives, my—our people and the people of Hyrule will continue to suffer. The Twilight is lifted now, but he can just as easily submerge this realm again."

Ooccoo appeared to share her son's opinion of the plan. "I understand what a confrontation would mean for all of us, but you saw for yourself what happened in Lanayru's Temple, dear," she shuddered at the memory. "Why, even a Light Spirit couldn't withstand his power!"

"He wiped the floor with a Light Spirit," Gale flatly agreed. "And you want to confront him?"

Ooccoo Junior saw Maeva's slumping shoulders and steeled himself. "W-We can beat him!" he said, flitting around Gale and his mother. "He hurt Maeva and Midna and turned Link back into a wolf! It doesn't matter if it was an accident," he loudly whispered to Maeva, who shook her head in embarrassment. "We have the Fused Shadow, right? If we can just sneak up on him, we can do it!"

"The truth is," said Midna, "I wasn't sure where to go from the Mirror. But that's a good plan."

"My only question is how," Maeva admitted, gnawning on her lower lip, "because Zant spoke as though he knew our every move."

The air grew cold with Gale's sigh. "What if…"

She was cut short by Ooccoo Junior's elated cheer. The wall had faded, and the statues, lights from their markings fading, bowed for Link. They all forgot the question as they leapt to him in amazement—even Maeva. The wolf himself barked excitedly. The others imagined that he was attempting to tell the story of what exactly he had done to clear the path until Gale reminded him that they could not understand a word and acting it out was, evidently, futile.

Up a new, winding path from behind the statues stood the blade of evil's bane, preserved through time in a simple pedestal only slightly wider than its cross-guard. The place shared a certain quality with the sacred grove, like emotions and thoughts suppressed from a time long past had stayed here to impress what was left behind to those still living. It sounded like murmurs in the leaves and songs of old drifting with the breeze.

It was an eerie thought, unhelped by Maeva's sudden anxiety regarding the sword. She knew it would help Link, but at the same time she felt that she hated the very sight of it. Maeva shook it off, though the tingle, the thrum in her left shoulder did not disappear as easily. The fear of the Sword was unnatural, so she tempered the emotion she was now certain was not even hers. It must have been an effect of this place.

Was it perhaps the blade itself that hated her for what she was? She knew nothing, except that it was a holy place. With the others, she knelt before the sword and humbly understood that the very goddesses who created the realms had seen this sword, melded it with their own hands.

"Wait," called Midna. "If you're going to transform back—you should probably have your clothes on. Maeva?"

Maeva almost laughed, but refrained from doing so as she helped Link into his Hero's Clothing. It felt so silly slipping a wolf's paws into his own sleeves, but she managed without so much as a snicker. Link gave her face a grateful lick despite the crinkling of her eyes in her attempts not to start guffawing.

Link approached the pedestal. Just then, the blade emitted a bright light, blinding all in its presence as a whirlwind took up, gusting like the very breath of the goddesses whispering their approval.

He raised the Master Sword in the air, eyes filled with wonder focused on the steel glinting in the sunlight. Maeva watched him as soon as they were able, a heavy pounding in her chest. She could not remove her eyes from him; nor did she notice her mouth drying. If there ever had lived a Hero mighty enough to defeat wicked sorcerers with but his cloth and a blade, here he was.

"Wasn't that amazing?" Ooccoo Junior prodded for the umpteenth time, bouncing his chin on Maeva's shoulder.

"Are you all right there, Maeva?" Gale made a sound of clearing her throat.

"Yes. Yes," she answered them both, glancing at their other companions and hoping they hadn't noticed. Relief was the order of the day when she saw that Midna was nodding proudly with Ooccoo while the young oocca continued to delight in the transformation, completely overlooking her.

"I was just thinking," continued Maeva.

The group's attention transferred to her. Link lowered the sword, his free hand tracing the steel in awe. "About what?"

"We do have a way to defeat Zant. You."

Link blinked, and then smiled. Maeva was still taken aback, but she was glad to return it and approached when he beckoned.

"What is it?" she considered pulling her arm away as he sheathed his sword to place his hand around her wrist and press a thumb on her palm, but Maeva was frozen.

Link released her, opening and closing his fists. "For a second," he laughed, wiggling his fingers, "I thought I'd never get these back again. Thank you, Maeva."

"It wasn't just me," she mumbled, and hated herself for doing so. She had thought the mumbling would end when she became friends with Link, for she no longer felt apprehension towards him. Just then it had been that same feeling—but about embarrassing herself. Could she never relax in his presence? Maeva forced herself to sound natural. "But it is good you're back – even if your other form had its uses." Like scaring Shad. She had liked that very much.

"Which is why we're keeping the stone," said Midna, holding it before them before allowing it to retreat within herself.

"What? Why?" asked Maeva, more fearful than furious. "It's filled with his hatred. It was painful, even to me."

"Maybe to you. But it's a reminder to me of what we need to vanquish. I'll keep it for all of us. Any objections?"

"If that is your wish," Maeva acquiesced, but the decision had upset her enough into silence. Ooccoo sat on her head as she made her way to the exit. Maybe she would think clearly again once she was outside the influence of this old magic.

Her footsteps slowed, halted when she saw a shadow under the arch, large and frozen like the statue of a great knight himself. Except he was dressed like a rancher, jaw hanging, a golden chicken nestled in his arms. When Ooccoo tilted her head curiously at the lad, so did he.

Link followed soon enough, frowning at the scene upon which he came. Mostly for confusion.

"Fado?" he asked, "What are you doing here?"

---

So, what did you think? I really like Uli, so she just had to make an appearance. I imagine that after Mayor Bo, Uli and Rusl were the ones with enough presence of mind to care for Link after his parents' death. Fado's, too. Yes, I like them mostly because of that head canon of mine. Haha!

Please tell me what you thought of the chapter and review! I'm pretty rusty so I gotta hear what you think.

It's been almost a year, but I'll still reply to the reviews I received after I posted the previous chapter!

AkaiKurai: Yeah! One thing I had a problem with was how Ooccoo Junior could just teleport everywhere. I'm glad you liked the incorporation of that. Hopefully this has revealed more of her past! But just a little more. Haha! Don't worry, there's going to be an entire exposition of that later. Er, eventually. Haha! Yeah, I agree about Ilia! I disliked her mostly because she was nagging at Link about Epona, then got kidnapped. It was inevitable though, her being the female in Link's age group.

Blitzi: It's all right that you didn't review the first few chapters! And I love long reviews! Whether it's just to discuss a certain topic or your thoughts about something. I need feedback so don't hold back. Tell me which grammatical errors you find, too! It's not offensive, it's helpful. :) I'm glad you like Link's personality! I have a hard time tilting him between his actual serious side and his outward cheeriness. In my mind, he actually is easygoing despite how he grew up an orphan, but he did take on more responsibility than a child should, so I thought it should come out in moments of crisis.

I'm just splitting up the paragraph because I don't want your eyes to get blurry from a big block, but thanks for that piece of feedback on Chapter 5! I read back and realized that Maeva does indeed get into a lot of trouble. But though she is good at combat, she has had very little field experience. It'll be explained later. Haha! It's so cool that you grew up with horses! Maeva doesn't know much about horses because beasts were utterly foreign to her until she came to the light realm, so she would have crazy inferences about them that may be false. I hope you enjoyed the chapter!

rainrushingwindowpain: I liked both Riku and Sora for their differing personalities, but I agree that I always saw Riku with more romance potential than Sora. Sora always felt like a little brother type because he was so cheerful and Riku was more of a love interest type with his sexy brooding self. So I guess I agree with you! Haha! I'm so happy you like my writing style! Or maybe you did a year ago. XD I get confused about the voice I'm supposed to be using sometimes and am always reading back to remember how to write these chapters, so thanks for the support. I'm honored that you think this is a great Link/OC fic because I'm sure there are many great ones out there! (Not that I'd know. I've deprived myself of Link/OC fics for years so that I don't get influenced/accidentally steal an idea.) Anyway! thank you for the review and I hope you still feel the same about the story after reading this chapter. Tell me what you thought!

whosahassa: Thanks for the feedback! I'm sorry I sounded defensive in my previous chapter. It's just my silly pride. But I totally understand what you mean. If this was written by someone else and I read it, I think I would have had the same opinion as you. But again, thanks for letting me know your opinion on events like that! I am genuinely glad to hear a reader's opinion on things and know I have to set apart my writing from me. :)) Also, I'm happy how you felt about Ilia's portrayal here! I haven't read other fics, but usually in fics with an OC I know that canon possible love interests usually get skewered in terms of characterization. I wanted to make it clear that it's Maeva's opinion of Ilia that is sour, out of jealousy, and not actually Ilia herself. She's a sweet girl, though I don't really care for her. (It would be Zelda if I had to choose, because I like fighting women. Haha!) As for how Maeva handled Lakebed Temple-tell me how you found it! I always thought of Maeva's dislike for water as something like a 'fear of the unknown' than a true fear because she never had any bad experiences with water that would make her fear getting into it. Her problem is that she didn't know how to survive in it, so once she found a way, she became confident. (But only with the crutch, which was the Zora armor.)

Thank you to everyone who reviewed! I love reading your long comments and constructive criticism and I hope to hear from you again, or if you're new, then hear from you, period. Haha! Stay tuned and I will hopefully update before another year ends! I'm aiming for January, before Christmas break is over. So...

REVIEW! And I hope you're all having a wonderful time now that it's almost Christmas break!