And this time, we make a prompt return!
Kaori: We don't own the Legend of Zelda, and if you think we're claiming that we do, you're an idiot.
Link's skin pulled tight as he sank into the cold water. He took a deep breath and submerged himself, the chill sucking at his body. He held his breath as long as he could. The waterfall was small, but still it roared behind him like the footsteps of a hundred horses.
The water was frigid at this hour, numbing. But Link was used to it. He squeezed his eyes shut, then, when he felt he couldn't hold out any longer, he tossed his head back out of the water, gasping.
"You'll drown yourself one of these days, doing that," Navi scolded, circling around his head.
Link's initial thought was "You're not the boss of me," but instead he said, "Don't worry about me so much."
"I'm your fairy," Navi said, bobbing in front of his face. "It's my job to worry about you."
Link plunged back underwater.
"Link!" Navi insisted. "Link!" She dodged a splash as he emerged again. "Are you feeling any better now?"
He took a deep breath and submerged himself a third time, ignoring her.
Navi sighed. "That boy," she said.
Up in the treehouse, Malon was combing the tangles out of her hair with her fingers. Her hair was damp and cold and she shivered a bit, though the forest evening was warm. She hadn't managed to find a comb at the Kokiri shop, though she had bought some sweet-smelling soap made from plant oils and ash.
When she glanced out the front door she could see Link bathing under the waterfall, Navi fluttering around him. He was too far away and it was too dark for her to see clearly, but she couldn't stop herself from peeking at him. His wet skin seemed to be coated with silvery, liquid moonlight. He was washing his back with one hand. Malon imagined how she would be able to see his individual muscles glistening if she were closer. As she watched him, he disappeared under the surface of the water, and then came back up near the bank. She knew she should look away, but she couldn't take her eyes off him. She caught one glimpse of the back of him, gloriously naked, before he disappeared into the privacy of the tall rushes.
Malon jerked herself away from the door. There was a warm, tingling sensation running down from her chest, down and down.
She distracted herself by pacing around the room, blowing out most of the candles. Link's old bed was child-sized, far too short for either of them, so they had rolled out blankets on the floor. When Link finally returned with an armful of sun fruit and princess peaches, Malon was applying the last of the burn salve to her foot.
"How does it feel?" he asked, dropping the fruit unceremoniously into a wooden bowl.
"Fine," she said in a small voice, wrapping it up carefully. It was almost completely healed now, but it had left a darkish, blotchy mark on her skin, a shadow of a scar.
"That's good," he said. He sat down beside her and handed her a peach.
"Thanks," she said, turning the soft pinkish fruit over in her hands. It was enormous, almost the size of the grapefruits they once sold in the market, imported from lands across the desert. "I've never seen peaches grow this big," she remarked.
"People aren't patient enough," he said. "They pick them before they're completely ripe."
She took a bite. The fruit was sweeter and juicier than any she'd ever tasted. She looked up at him, then immediately flicked her eyes away, afraid he'd somehow know she'd been spying on him while he was under the waterfall. Had he peeked at her, too, while she was bathing? Suddenly she felt self-conscious.
Link glanced at her just in time to see a little peach juice dribble over her lips and flow down her chin. He wanted to lick it away, follow that juicy trail all the way up into her sweet pink mouth. He looked away quickly.
"I think I'm going to go to bed," she said when she'd finished.
Link nodded. He was already taking off his boots and belt. They both knew they were going to the Forest Temple the next day, though they hadn't discussed it.
"Why don't you kiss her good-night?" Navi teased from inside his hat.
"Shh!" he hissed. Malon paused in the middle of licking the juice off her fingers and raised an eyebrow at him. "Er..." He laughed nervously.
Link lay awake for a little while after Malon had gone to sleep. She was lying beside him with her back to him, her ribs rising and falling gently. He wanted desperately to touch her, to pull her close to him, to kiss her neck and push his hands underneath her clothes... She smelled good, he thought to himself as he drifted off. When he woke once in the night, he moved a lock of red hair out of her face and went back to sleep. Navi bobbed against the ceiling, keeping watch over them through the night.
Malon couldn't explain what was happening. She felt like she was in a world that had no substance, only shadows and light. Someone was kissing her, someone whose mouth tasted like peaches, and she was kissing him back. It was Link, she realized, Link who was kissing her everywhere, Link who was touching her, and suddenly she realized her clothes were gone and his were gone, and his skin felt like silk in her hands, and he seemed to have a thousand mouths kissing her and a thousand hands touching her. And then he was on top of her and inside her and his arms were all around her, and with every movement he seemed to be filling her with a delicious liquid fire...
When Link woke up, Malon was gone. He put his hand out and touched the blankets where she had slept. They were still warm. He moved his face closer. They still smelled like her.
He stretched and groaned. Where had she gone?
He stepped outside, pulling his green tunic over his head. He looked around, his ears catching the sound of a sword singing in the air.
Malon was practicing sword forms at the training field. She was wearing only her pants and undershirt, which kept falling down to reveal her collarbone and the tops of her breasts.
Link tried to think about cutting grass.
Malon caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye and lowered her sword. "G-good morning," she said, turning to him slowly. A shred of her dream from the night before went skipping through her mind.
"Good morning," he said in a tiny voice, wondering why she suddenly seemed so bashful. The wind was blowing and the morning sun made her hair look like fire. She reminded him a little of a painting he'd once seen of the goddess Din. "Maybe you shouldn't tire yourself out," he advised shyly.
Malon nodded. Their two pairs of blue eyes stared at one another.
"I- I just wanted to be ready," she said. She lifted the sword again, swinging it from right to left.
"Don't bend your wrists like that," Link said, taking a step in her direction.
Malon looked up again. "Show me."
Link hesitated. "W-well, I'm not left-handed," he said, "but..." he moved behind her, heart pounding, and put his hands on top of hers. "Like this," he said breathlessly, swinging the sword for her. "You use your whole arm, your wrists aren't strong enough..."
Malon gulped, staring down at the hands covering hers. The dream was vivid in her memory, the dream in which those hands were touching her in ways she'd never been touched. "Er... maybe we should get ready to go."
"Yes. Let's do that," Link said quickly, breaking away from her.
They ate a silent breakfast of fruit and Kokiri flatbread with anise-flavored honey, and then prepared to go to the forest temple.
Before long they stood at the entrance to the Sacred Forest Meadow. Link wiped his brow. He was perspiring both from nerves and from the humidity. "Are you ready?" he asked Malon quietly.
"I hope so," she said. She had braided her hair and tied it up at the nape of her neck to keep it out of the way, and she was glad for it already. The air in the Lost Woods was warm and muggy, more so than she'd expected.
They stepped forward carefully, wary that something could leap out of the tall grass at any moment.
"Do you hear that?" Malon whispered. Link froze, listening. He could hear a sort of throaty grunting sound.
"Navi." he said. The fairy zoomed out of his hat and away. Malon stepped on a twig and made them both jump. In Link's childhood the meadow had been infested by Mad Scrubs – annoying, not terribly dangerous – but who knew what creatures had moved in since then?
"Moblins," Navi hissed, swooping back over the wall of the maze. "A bunch of them!"
Link took a deep breath and steadied his grip on his sword. He'd yet to encounter a Moblin, but Navi had described them to him before. He set his jaw. He'd killed far worse monsters before, he reminded himself. But his heart was pounding. He glanced at Malon. Could it be... that he was afraid for her? "Let's go," he said finally. He stepped into the narrow passageway.
Link barely had time to hear the alarmed, piggish grunt before the Moblin charged him, pushing him back some ten feet and knocking him into a pit filled with collected rainwater. Link spluttered. The creature lifted its spear again. Link let himself go limp in the water, playing dead. Apparently satisfied, the Moblin turned its back and marched off. Link grabbed onto the edge of the pit, pulling his hookshot out from under his shield. The creature gave a pained groan as the sharp hook pierced its spine and it fell to the ground, dead.
Malon, who had leaped back just in time, rushed to his side and helped him pull himself out of the water. "Are you all right?"
"Idiot," Navi muttered affectionately.
Link nodded. His shirt of chain mail was all that had saved him from being impaled.
"Maybe we should be more careful," Malon said. He nodded again, still out of breath.
They made their way cautiously through the rest of maze, peeking around corners with their backs to the wall. As large and brutish as they were, it was obvious that the Moblins were not particularly bright, and it also seemed as though many of them were mostly blind. Malon examined the body of a particularly large one with a massive club. It had been concentrating so hard on its job that it didn't even turn around to defend itself when they slipped past it and attacked it from behind.
"Look at that," she said, holding one of its eyes open. "Cataracts in both eyes. No wonder it couldn't hit us."
Link grimaced. He had never thought to stop and look at the body of a dead monster, much less touch it. He tried with little avail to clean the sticky red Moblin blood off of the hookshot.
"Come on," he said. "The temple's just up these stairs."
Together they jogged up the long flight of stone steps. Link hoped, half-expected, wished that Saria would be there, sitting on her tree stump, waiting for him. That she had some explanation for why she hadn't been home, that she was all right and they could all just go home.
But she wasn't there. Link walked slowly towards the tree stump where she so often sat, playing her ocarina. He heard Malon's footsteps follow him. The memory of Saria, the feeling of Saria, was so strong it was almost tangible, as if he could blink and suddenly his best friend would be there, smiling at him.
Something moved in his peripheral vision. Malon had her sword out in an instant. It was Sheik again, that strange young man they'd met at the Temple of Time.
Sheik stepped towards them, paying no attention to Malon's brandished blade. "The flow of time is always cruel," he said to Link. "Its speed seems different for each person, but no one can change it..."
Malon watched him warily. Something about him didn't seem right to her, but she couldn't figure out what it was. He wasn't watching her this time, but the eye emblazoned on his shirt seemed to follow her as she moved closer to Link.
"A thing that doesn't change with time," the strange youth continued, casting his eyes down on the tree stump, "is a memory of younger days."
Link gulped. Was it possible that Sheik could read his mind?
"In order to come back here again, play the Minuet of Forest." Sheik drew out a harp, nodding to Link. He traced a short little melody in three and Link followed along on his ocarina. Malon hummed it to herself.
"Link..." Sheik said when he had finished. He took a few steps backward, then turned his blood-red eye to Malon. "I'll see you again."
There was a small pop and a blinding flash, and then he was gone. Link's head jerked around, trying to see where he had gone. But the other boy had vanished.
Malon sighed and put away her sword. Sheik made her uneasy, in a way she couldn't describe.
They both looked up at the mouth of the temple. There had once been stairs leading up to it, but they had crumbled ages ago.
"The Kokiri used to worship here," Navi said. "A long, long time ago."
Malon wondered if Navi had ever been inside the temple before, but she didn't ask. She wasn't sure how much Link knew of the fairy's past, or even if he knew that she had once been companion to someone else.
It was terribly still. It seemed as though even insects were afraid to go near the temple nowadays. Its walls surrounded them, and seemed almost to be stretching, leaning in to trap them. It looked much more forbidding, Link thought, without Saria here.
"How do we get in?" Malon wondered aloud.
"I have an idea," Link said, hookshot in hand. He held an arm out to her. "Hold onto me."
Malon obliged, wrapping her arms around him tightly. He put one of his around her waist. They both might have gotten a thrill out of it were they not so overwhelmed by the aura of the temple. Link fired the hookshot up into the branch of the tree overhead. They were pulled swiftly up, then dropped, a little clumsily, to the ground in front of the door.
Even though there was no wind, they thought they could almost hear a low moaning sound coming from inside. The stones from which it was built seemed ancient and alive to them, and they felt small and vulnerable. They stared into the darkness in front of them.
"Are you afraid?" Link asked, not looking at her.
"Yes," she said in a small voice.
"Me too."
They looked at each other for a moment, as if they feared they'd never see each other again.
"Kiss her," Navi urged from inside Link's hat.
They drew their swords and headed into the Forest Temple.
We were inspired to continue this story by all of you who continued to comment and message us during our long absence.
Kaori: Yes, that's a bribe. Please review!