"Hey!" Navi cried suddenly, startling Linkali so badly that the girl jumped at least six inches into the air. The fairy's piercing shout seemed to ring out through the quiet forest.

"What was that?" Lin asked incredulously.

"What was that?" Navi demanded, her blue glow flashing from yellow to green as she darted across the clearing. Linkali ran after her, shaking her head in confusion. She saw something dark sprinting on all fours, just ahead of the excited fairy, dodging from shelter to shelter and bursting away when Navi got too close. She had a feeling she knew what it was, and she began sidestepping around the two other creatures to head them off. The youth positioned herself just behind a large, crumbling stone pillar, and when the time was right, she lunged out and grasped the creature Navi had been chasing. It struggled in her arms, making breathy, drawn-out squeaking sounds. Linkali laughed and embraced it.

That seemed to alleviate any anxiety it creature had. It relaxed in her arms for a brief moment, then began wriggling and squirming, making soft hree, hree noises as it did. Lin laughed again as little hands scrabbled against her face gently. The creature slipped out of her arms, crawled over her shoulder, slid down her back, and landed with a thump on the ground behind her. She turned and smiled. "I got you!" she said.

"Iss!" the creature responded with a nod. It looked almost like a little boy at first glance, but it didn't take much more than a second look to see that it was not like any other boy. The child's face was round, but its nose was flattened, and its cheeks and face seemed to come to a vague point in the front, like a rodent's muzzle. His ears were rather large and round, but they still had little points on the ends. His hands and feet were small; his fingers and toes were rather short, and they ended in tiny claws. A short mouse tail, barely eight inches in length, poked out from a hole in the back of his ragged, green shorts. It was a Kirikiri.

Linkali knelt down and offered her hand, which the mouse-child sniffed eagerly. His nose twitched. He sat back on his haunches and combed one of his hand-paws through his ginger-blonde hair. "Quick to catch Kirirkiri," he told her, jerking a stubby thumb at his bare chest. He spoke in the short, snappy way that his people were known for. "Name Riido, Boss of Kirikiri. You want play?"

Lin heard Navi's chiming quivering and saw the fair's shuddering light out of the corner of her eyes. She had expected something like this to happen, although she couldn't say she was pleased to be right. In fact, she almost wished she could have been wrong. She turned over her shoulder to give Navi an apologetic look, and heard Riido give a sudden squeal of shock. Linkali whipped back around to see what had happened, only to see the Kirikiri boy pointing a shaking finger at the fairy. His blue eyes were huge and round. He gave himself a brisk shake, blinked at Navi, pinched his paw, blinked at Navi…It almost looked like he was trying to wake himself up from a dream. After a few minutes, he stopped prodding and twitching, and settled for simply staring. "Not time for play," he said breathlessly. "Is time for showing. Come…must see other Kirikiri."

Riido turned around and crouched on all fours. Glancing over his shoulder, he nodded at Linkali. "Follow," he ordered. "And bring…bring shining bird." He pointed at Navi. Lin nodded her agreement, and the boy raced across the ground at breakneck speed. Even with her longer legs, the Hylian was hard-pressed to keep up with him.

"That's Mido," Navi whispered in her ear. "I'd remember him anywhere. It has to be him."

"I had a feeling this would be the case," Lin muttered. "Ganon's dark power has changed Hyrule since the time of the Hero. I guess the Kokiri changed into the Kirikiri over time—maybe they became like mice because they were timid and hid. Gods know they've had plenty of time to be transformed."

Navi was silent after that, and Linkali knew that the fairy was still trying to come to grips with the fact that she had been hiding in the forest for over one hundred years. The young Hylian wished she could have offered some sort of comforts, but before she could think of what to say or do, Riido stopped them in front of one of the treehouses.

"In here, is Kirikiri," he informed them, pointing to a small door. Lin figured she would need to crouch down in order to fit through. She did so without complaining, feeling Navi rest on her shoulder.

The inside of the house was dark (for the sun had barely risen over the forest) and warm, and smelled faintly of smoke and urine. It took a few minutes for Linkali's eyes to adjust to the dim light, but once they did, she could not help but stare. There were many items scattered about the room that looked like they might once have been things like a bed, a table, a bookshelf, a fireplace, but they had been gnawed and battered until they were almost unrecognizable. Shards of pottery mingled on the dirt floor with bones and feathers, as well as a few worn balls and other toys. There were at least ten Kirikiri, males and females, perched and huddled in the strangest of places. Their bright eyes glinted in the darkness. But that was not what intrigued Lin the most.

The walls of the house were plastered with ink and charcoal drawings. They were simple things, and a great deal were merely scribbles and abstract shapes, but a handful of the papers bore sketches of eerily familiar objects. One of them was of a treehouse like the one they were in now; in front of the house was a stick-figure boy with a tall cap and hair that covered half of his face. Another showed a tree with a rather long face drawn on its bark. Still another showed an image of what Linkali would have sworn, in front of gods and everyone, was a fairy—a crooked, winged circle with lines indicating light radiating out from it, and a trail of sparkles below it.

"Look at them, Lin," Navi was whimpering. "They're all alone—where are their fairy partners? And why do they look like little mice? This can't be right." Linkali gave the fretting fairy a sympathetic look. She wanted to offer words of comfort, but something distracted her first. She realized that she could hear the Kirikiri whispering, squeaking, and shuffling amongst themselves. Their keen eyes were focused on Navi, and they kept murmuring the words "shining bird" to one another. Finally, the Hylian youth turned to Riido.

"What's going on?" she asked.

Riido pointed to Navi. "Shining bird!" He couldn't help squealing the words louder, and the rest of the Kirikiri took up his cry. They continued to echo it in the background as Lin spoke:

"Riido, what is the shining bird? Is it important?" she asked. The mouse-child frowned.

"Shining bird is that." He pointed at Navi emphatically. "Is important? Not know," he answered, spreading his paws helplessly. "See it many times. Is almost always in awake-dreams. Must be important, but not look important. Is hard to know. Have many Dreaminks with shining bird." He shook his head. "But Kirikiri excited because shining bird is real. We see in dreams, make many Dreaminks. But is real!"

"What are Dreaminks?" Linkali asked curiously. Riido snorted, pouted, and scurried off. He returned a moment later with a stack of papers in his hands, and handed it to the girl to look through.

"Sometimes, Kirikiri have dreams when awake," he explained. "Different from dreams when asleep. Sleeping-dreams about playing, running, eating; these different. In awake-dreams, we see other worlds—see dreamworlds. When Kirikiri have dreams when awake, we give them ink, paper. They draw, make Dreaminks." He tapped the papers with a finger. "Those, Dreaminks." He gestured to the pages that wallpapered the house. "All those, Dreaminks."

"So, from what I understand," Linkali told Navi, though she doubted the fairy was listening, "They go into a trance and see visions of another world. They draw what they see, and those become the Dreaminks."

"These aren't visions of other worlds," Navi replied in a low murmur. She pointed to one of the pages, a drawing of the long-faced tree. "That's the Great Deku Tree. And that's the Know-It-All Brothers' house." The fairy turned back to Lin. "They aren't seeing other worlds. They're seeing their past, Lin—they're remembering a time when they were still the Kokiri!"

A cold jolt ran through the young woman's heart. "Wasn't the Sage of Forest one of the Kokiri?" she asked. Navi nodded. "What was her name?"

"Saria…But I don't see anyone who looks like her here." Navi shuddered. "Oh, Lin—they've got tails! Little mouse tails!"

Linkali smothered a sigh. "I'm sure the Kirikiri are perfectly fine with their tails." Turning to the leader of the Kirikiri, she asked, "Riido, is there a Kirikiri whose name sounds similar to 'Saria'?" Riido blinked up at her for a few minutes, causing the girl to wonder if she should repeat her question. Before she could, though, the mouse-child scratched behind his ear thoughtfully.

"Sri?" he asked. "You want Sri?" Lin nodded; Riido sighed deeply. "You need luck. Sri went to Dark Woods, up there, to old stone place." He pointed in the general direction of what Navi had called the Lost Woods. "Is bad place for Kirikiri—not know why Sri go. Sri strange sometimes, but I like her." He hung his head sullenly. "Not matter now…Sri probably dead, eaten by monster or starved in forest."

"Don't say that," Linkali assured him, resting her hand on his narrow shoulder. The Kirikiri boy looked up curiously. "Riido, I'm going to find Sri. I'm sure she's alive and well, just a little lost."

"Sri gone many days," the mouse-child told her sadly. He paused, counted, and held up eight fingers. "Many days," he repeated. "Not see her again. Ohh, Sri! Ohh, Sri!" The other Kirikiri took up the mournful wailing, throwing back their heads and crying along with their leader. Linkali flinched away from the shrill sounds, barely overcoming the temptation to clap her hands over her sensitive ears. Just when she thought she couldn't stand it anymore, she heard an even higher-pitched rose rising out above the melee.

"Dreeeeeam!" it shrieked. "Dreeeeeam!"

The Kirikiri fell silent, and their cluster parted to reveal a mouse-girl with sunny blonde hair pulled back into two tight loops behind her. She was standing on her haunches, her hand thrust out in front of her. Her amethyst eyes were wide and glazed, and her mouth was gaping open. "Dreeeeeam!" she squealed again.

Riido snapped into action. He clapped his paws together. "Paper, ink!" he ordered, and a few of the Kirikiri rushed off to obey him. He turned to Linkali. "Faiido will make new Dreamink," he informed her matter-of-factly. "Faiido, sister." He pointed to himself.

"Fado," Navi whispered. "That's Fado, Mido's little sister."

Once the ink-dipped brush was near Faiido, the Kirikiri gripped it in both paws like a lifeline and began to draw with frantic sweeps. Her eyes stared unseeing into the distance, and her breath came in heaving gasps. The Kirikiri leaned in as one, tense with excitement. Faiido whimpered as she drew madly, then gave a sudden squeal and toppled backwards, the brush flying from her hands. One of the mouse-boys caught her before she hit the ground, and slowly eased her back onto her haunches again. Riido snatched up the newest Dreamink and studied it critically. He glanced from the page to Linkali, smiling and nodding to himself. After a moment, he brought it over to her and deposited it in her lap. Navi hummed down a little lower to get a better look at the image.

Faiido had drawn a rough image of a boy. His body was a sketchy rectangle with a line going across its middle and another diagonally across it. His head was an uneven circle with a long triangle coming off the top of it. He held in his hand (only his left arm, a thin line, was drawn in) what almost appeared to be a sword. Linkali frowned slightly. "That, Cap Boy," Riido told her. "See him, many Dreaminks. See him do brave things, save dream-worlds. Have same eyes as you." He gave a rodenty grin. "If you like Cap Boy, maybe you find Sri."

Riido turned around to the Kirikiri and clapped his handpaws together, uttering a sharp stream of squeaked orders. The mouse-children scrambled to obey, and after a minute, one of them returned. It had what looked like a necklace made of bones and teeth in its hands. Riido took the necklace from the Kirikiri, and turned back to Lin. He frowned. "You too tall," he grunted, waving one of his hands down. Linkali bent her head lower, and the mouse-child slipped the necklace over her head. The Hylian girl studied it curiously. The central pendant was the dull-white skull of a small bird, with a cord looped through the eye sockets. Hollowed-out legbones from some unknown animal were strung alongside the skull, followed by a few beads, vertebrae, and another cluster of beads at the back. A little confused by the gift, she looked back at Riido.

"Amulet," he informed her, pointing to the necklace. "Means you are friend of Kirikiri. For letting us see shining bird is real." He grinned at Navi meaningfully.

Linkali smiled. "Thank you, Riido," she said. "I promise, I'll find Sri." Her words caused the Kirikiri to burst into gleeful cheers. The mouse-children followed her out of the house, prancing happily around her ankles and frolicking after her. A few of them had produced bone flutes, which they tooted on as they ran, filling the forest with the eerily-pitched notes. The closer she got to the entrance of the Lost Woods, though, the more Kirikiri dropped back and watched her progress from a distance. When she reached the foot of the first ridge, only Riido walked beside her, padding along on all fours. (His limbs were short enough, Lin noticed, that he could actually move around that way quite effectively.) The boy crawled up the side of her leg and perched on her shoulders as she climbed up the vines, then hopped off as she neared the top. He waited for her to pull herself up before he spoke.

"Find Sri," he pleaded. "Riido is Boss of Kirikiri, but Sri is also Boss, almost. Kirikiri nervous without Sri. Sri is like bottle of fireflies at night; no one scared with Sri around."

"I'll find her," Linkali vowed. Riido smiled, nodded, sniffed the skull on the Hylian's amulet, and scurried back down the vines to be with the rest of his people. Lin glanced over at Navi, nodded, and started walking towards the log tunnel that led into the twisting forest.

"I bet that when he said the 'old stone place', he was referring to the Forest Temple," Navi said, bobbing alongside the girl as they walked through the first log. Linkali nodded. "You'd need the Hookshot to get up there, which you already do."

"Lead the way, Navi," the Hylian youth declared, gesturing broadly at the three log tunnels that now faced them. The fairy drifted from side to side, then to the middle, and chose the passage on the right. Linkali followed after her, glad in the strangest way that she had found someone to share her journey with her.


Lin twisted the handle of the Hookshot deftly and took aim on the dead tree that hung over the stone landing outside the Forest Temple. She wrapped one hand around the column of the strange weapon and hesitated, glancing up at Navi. The fairy bobbed up and down encouragingly. Taking a deep breath, Linkali placed her hand back on the column and pushed down, releasing it swiftly to avoid snagging her hand on the chain. (A painful lesson she had learned the first time she'd used it earlier that morning.) The pointed hook shot out and thudded deep into the bark of the tree. The Hylian youth paused again, her eyes going from tree to Hookshot barrel; she was hesitant to reel in the chain, for fear that the hook had not snagged as deeply as she'd first thought. The last thing she wanted was for the hook to come out, especially if it took part of the tree with it.

"Lin, maybe you haven't had the chance to see this for yourself yet," Navi began slowly, "but the Hookshot…If you don't reel in the chain after a certain amount of time, it—"

She never finished her sentence, because Linkali's wild shout of surprise downed out her small voice. The Hookshot chain rattled as it wrapped itself around the barrel of the weapon once again; when the chain reached the hook, the metal point popped free of the old wood, and the Hookshot was ready to be fired a second time. Lin couldn't clamp down on the "Ah!" that the drop onto the stone landing jerked out of her. Navi zipped around her head worriedly.

"Lin! Are you all right? Say something!" the fairy cried. Linkali grinned up at her.

"That was fun!" she replied happily. She held up the Hookshot, eyeing it with pride and something approaching affection. "I think I like this weapon, Navi." The blue fairy heaved a sigh, though it was not an unhappy one, and flitted over to the empty stone doorway. Her glow illuminated some of the weathered, moss-encrusted stones of the entrance.

Linkali pushed herself up and walked calmly over to where her companion hovered. She pressed her hand against the old stone, almost reverent in her gentleness. She wondered just how long this Temple had stood where it did. It had been old when the Hero had explored it, and it was even older now. The girl's fingers lingered over the cold lichen, stroking it softly. If she closed her eyes and focused, Lin swore she could feel the incredible energy the Forest Temple radiated. She felt a strange tingle of familiarity, and wondered if it had anything to do with her role as the Incarnation of the Hero. Zelda had said that she was not a reincarnation of the Hero of Time, nor was she him in a second coming…but Linkali had to wonder if perhaps some of what he had lived had been passed on to her along with the Triforce of Courage.

There was no time to ponder such things, though. Lin opened her eyes and shook her head, both to scatter the thoughts that had gathered there and to answer Navi's query of "Is anything wrong, Lin?" The Hylian girl smiled up at the fairy.

"I was just thinking about something," she responded.

"Well, you might want to keep your mind on the Temple," Navi warned her. "For all we know, this place could be crawling with monsters, and that Hookshot of yours isn't a melee weapon—and I think we can safely count the Master Sword out as a weapon of any sort in its current state. You'll be in huge trouble if you let enemies gang up on you." Linkali nodded in agreement, and the pair set off into the Forest Temple.

"I just hope I don't run into a situation where I'd need a melee weapon," the Hylian said, shifting her gaze away from the Temple to glance at Navi. She wanted to say more, but a drawn-out howl cut her off. She noticed that the fairy's blue glow had made a sudden shift to bright yellow. Navi swung around behind Linkali and hovered over the head of a lumbering, loping animal almost as tall as the youth herself.

"Hey!" Navi yelled in warning. Lin's eyes widened.

"What in Farore's name is that?" she blurted out, unable to see clearly in the low light of the temple.

"A Wolfos!" the fairy replied. "Draw it close to you and watch its movements carefully! Attack it when it drops its guard!"

Linkali sighed as she back away from the lone monster warily. If only Ganga were here with her! She'd heard tales of the massive black dog fighting off a Wolfos that had threatened Kokoria's flock of goats. The girl narrowed her eyes as she watched the beast approach, its eerie green eyes tinged with yellow from the body of the fairy humming above its head. Ganga was back at the village; Lin was going to have to figure out how to take care of herself. Draw it close, she thought, and stopped backing away for the moment. Attack when it drops its guard. She torqued the handle of the Hookshot and gripped the barrel with one hand in readiness.

The Wolfos shambled closer, its long tongue trailing out of the corner of its mouth. It howled and reared up onto its short hindlegs. Linkali tensed, the hand on the barrel of the Hookshot tightening its grip. She bit her lower lip, waiting for the opening Navi had promised her. She still had room to retreat if need be, but she hoped it wouldn't come to that. The Wolfos, huffing and drooling, drew back one of its long forelegs in preparation to strike. Its hooked claws gleamed dully in the glow from Navi's body, and their dangerously sharp tips seemed to sparkle. Lin wrenched her gaze away from those talons and turned it to the Wolfos's chest, which was currently unguarded. That had to be the dropped guard the fairy had warned her about. The Hylian youth punched the Hookshot barrel down roughly, releasing it with a cry.

The metal hook shot towards the Wolfos, ripping right through its dense, matted fur and plowing deep into its body. The wounded monster bayed shrilly, and flipped over backwards to try and free itself from the pain. Linkali yanked back on the Hookshot's handle and barrel, and succeeded it tugging the hook loose before the frantic Wolfos could pull her off her feet with its frantic running. She twisted the handle again, preparing a second shot. The Wolfos was avoiding her, cowering and yelping as it tried in vain to scrabble up the vine-furred walls of the first room. Lin hesitated; somehow, she wasn't totally sure she wanted to do this. Her opponent looked more frightened than frightful, as it cringed and whined painfully in the corner of the room. A very un-warrior-like emotion stopped all thoughts of attack: pity.

The young woman lowered the Hookshot and began walking towards the Wolfos, which tried to shove itself even further into the corner when it saw her approach. Linkali stopped a few feet away and crouched down. She could see small pools of blood along the ground, forming a trail that led to the wounded monster. She held out her hand. "Hey…hey, don't hide," she whispered gently. The Wolfos looked over at her mournfully. "Come on…let's take a look at you…"

"Lin, what are you doing?" Navi hissed in disbelief. "If you're that worried about its wellbeing, why don't you just put it out of its suffering now?"

"What if it didn't mean to attack me, though?" Lin asked. "What if it was just afraid of me, and it thought it had to defend itself?"

"It's a Wolfos; I'm pretty sure it meant to attack you." The fairy crossed her arms over her chest and sat back in the air with an angry pout on her face.

The Wolfos poked its snout closer to the girl's hand while she was bickering with Navi. Linkali heard a whimper and turned to see the wounded beast bring its nose close to her fingers. She smiled gently down at it, and began preparing a lecture about mercy for her fairy friend. However, before she could even think of how to start it, the Wolfos, which had opened its mouth to apparently lick the youth's hand in peace, gave a sudden snarl and bared its teeth. Linkali snatched her hand away just in the nick of time; she heard the wolf-like monster's fangs snap together over empty air.

She reached for the Hookshot, and the Wolfos bunched its legs and leapt over her head with a wild howl. Its chest bled freely, but it was far from giving up the fight. It snarled bravely and let loose a furious howl. Lin prepped the Hookshot for another firing and aimed at her opponent. The Wolfos bounded toward her, tongue flapping, jaws dripping, claws tensed to tear Hylian flesh. It flung itself up onto its back legs, aimed a foreleg attack, gave voice to a howl that could wake the dead—

—and took a Hookshot point right to the heart.

Linkali watched as the wolf-monster exploded into smoke with a final, dying howl. Her legs were shaking, and she found it hard to believe that she had actually killed a monster. The Stalchilds on the Field didn't count—they were already dead, as far as she cared. The Mad Scrubs didn't count either—Lin hadn't known they were alive at the time. But the Wolfos…it had been a living, breathing creature, whose heart had beaten and whose lungs had breathed. It had had a mother at some point in its life, a mother who had bathed its fur, and fed it milk, and taught it how to hunt and howl. She'd killed it. The shock of the revelation nearly caused her to drop the Hookshot with a guilty sob. Navi cut in before she could even think of crying.

"Lesson One," the fairy snapped, swooping in front of the girl's face and back out again in her agitation, "Mercy is not a concept monsters understand! You're going to have to learn that with monsters, you either kill or you are killed."

Linkali gripped the Hookshot tightly, her eyes wide as she watched the angry, darting Navi. The fairy's skin was giving off a rather heated-looking red light, and her wings were buzzing loudly in her agitation. The young Hylian dropped her face shamefully, and her arms fell limp at her sides. She was getting a scolding for her foolishness, and she knew it was well-deserved. Her body flashed hot and cold with embarrassment as Navi's tirade continued; the fairy raved—in an increasingly worried-sounding tone of voice—about how deceptive monsters could be, how things weren't always as they appeared, and how if Lin wasn't careful, she could find herself in serious trouble because you could never tell what a monster was thinking, and that any weakness it showed was probably an act to lure you in closer so that it could have a clear shot at you.

Navi was panting for breath by the time she noticed Linkali's troubled body language. Her scarlet light faded out, and her normal blue glow returned. She hummed down and hovered in front of the girl's face. "Lin…?" she asked quietly. "Lin, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have flared up at you like that. It's just that I…" She trailed off, glancing around; her voice grew tight as she continued, "I've seen what happens when someone assumes that a monster is harmless just because it isn't actively attacking them. And I don't want to see that happen to you."

"It isn't your fault," Linkali murmured sadly. "I'm the one who should be sorry, and I am. I asked for you to help me through the quest set before me, and when you tried to help me, I ignored you. If I had listened, none of this would have happened."

"All right, so we're both pathetically sorry." Navi parked her fists firmly on her round hips and grinned. Linkali lifted her eyes to meet the fairy's, and smiled tentatively. "Ahh! There we go! Now, as touching as this bonding experience is, it's not getting us any closer to the Sage of Forest." She bent down and patted the Hylian girl's cheek fondly with one of her tiny hands. With that, the stocky fairy darted back and zipped towards the door at the end of the room. She bobbed there, a ball of blue light in the dark corner of the Temple. "Come on, partner! Let's go already!"

Lin balked, one side of her smile stretching up faster and higher than the other. She called me her "partner." The girl raced over to the door; her sadness over the Wolfos's death and her shame at her scolding were quickly forgotten.


Linkali was glad that she had learned to listen to Navi early on in the Temple; the fairy knew things about the old stone building and the monsters within than Lin could have ever guessed, and she never would have survived if she'd blown off her new companion's advice. The challenges only ramped up as the day went on and the two of them pushed their way through the Forest Temple, and matters were made somewhat complicated by the fact that the girl did not have a useable sword. She wound up fleeing from several enemies that her Hookshot could not best, and now had a line of small cuts on her forehead—the result of an escape attempt that could have gone better. They stopped around one in the afternoon for a quick, late lunch, huddled back in the secrecy of a hallway corner beside a door. Linkali ate the sandwich Zelda had given her, while Navi—who said she wanted to get the girl patched up before she ate—cleaned out the scratches.

"Fortunately—stop twitching, Lin; I know it stings, but I can't help you if you keep flinching away like that—fortunately, the door didn't lock on you," Navi said, holding the youth's bangs away with one arm to treat the small wounds with the other.

"Yes, that really was—ah! Sweet Farore, Navi!—was a stroke of luck," Linkali replied, struggling not to cringe from the fiery prickle of the fairy's healing magic. It wasn't that it hurt; it was just a very unusual and unexpected sensation, and some part of Lin's instincts had decided that it should be avoided. "After we—yih!—finish here, what's next?"

"The room where we found the Fairy Bow is that one beside you," the fairy replied. "There—finished, and not even a scab or scar!" With that, she dropped down onto the young Hylian's knee and gratefully took the pinch of bread and cheese Linkali offered her. She devoured it in massive bites while the girl spoke.

"Thank you," Lin said. "I can't come home looking any different from when I left. My parents think I'm helping an old woman do chores around the house today, not crawling through a monster-infested Temple in search of a Sage who's forgotten who she is." She shrugged and glanced at the door beside her. "So, the Bow, huh? Zelda said that the weapons found in the Temples made their way back to where they were before…Do you really think we'll find it in there?"

"If Princess Zelda said so, then I'd believe it," Navi told her, and held out her hands hungrily. Linkali turned the sandwich around so that the unbitten side of it faced the fairy. Navi smiled as she tore off a piece for herself. "My only concern is that when Link was here, the Fairy Bow was being guarded by a pair of Stalfos warriors. They're fairly easy enemies to take down if you're a cautious fighter, but battling them is probably only possible with a sword and shield…neither of which do you possess." And with that, she took a rather large bite of bread.

"Are you sure there's no other way?" asked Linkali, starting to get a little worried. "If it's impossible…" Navi frowned, chewed, and swallowed.

"I didn't say it was impossible," the stocky fairy reminded her. "It's just not very possible. It could be done, I'm sure, but it probably wouldn't be easy. But who knows—there may be a completely different enemy guarding the Bow these days, one that will fall easily to your Hookshot. This Temple isn't exactly how I remember it; things have changed."

"There is only one way to find out whether or not this part of the Temple has stayed the same," Lin pointed out, "and that's to go in and see for ourselves." Navi nodded in agreement before she took another huge bite. The girl swallowed a grin. She should have expected a small creature like Navi to have a frenzied metabolism, but somehow she couldn't help being amused by how voraciously the fairy ate.

When the sandwich was gone, Linkali and Navi did not move immediately from their positions beside the door. Though neither said so, both of them were clearly worried about what could be lying in wait for them. Lin found herself wishing that she was back at the village with Bartal, where the only uncertainty was whether the sport they were practicing at the moment would kill them or not. She sighed and pushed herself to her feet; Navi floated up after her. If wishes were fishes, the Hylian youth thought, evoking one of her mother's favorite expressions, there would be no room for water in the sea. Linkali's hand stole towards the pouch of Medallions at her waist. Like it or not, this was something she was going to have to do, and if it meant stepping into the unknown, then Lin would step.

Besides, hadn't the Warrior's Spirit said she could face the challenges laid before her, and triumph?

"I'm ready," the girl murmured. She released her breath in a shuddering sigh and, gripping the Hookshot with one hand, pushed her other palm against the door. It slid up, and Linkali stepped into the room as quietly as she could. The door fell behind her with a low thomm; much to her relief, no iron bars slid down to block her escape.

Lin bit her lip, glancing over at Navi warily in the silence. The large, round room was empty, save for a number of clay jars scattered around its edges and a large wooden chest in the center. The girl's blue eyes darted around the chamber, seeking the monsters that had to be lurking in the shadows. Her whole body was tense, and the hand gripping the Hookshot's handle was shaking just slightly. The seconds ticked past, becoming minutes, and nothing lunged out to attack.

Linkali snapped her gaze to the high ceiling above, wary of an aerial assault or perhaps an opponent leaping down to meet her. Nothing; there wasn't even anywhere for a monster to hide up there. Would the attack come from below, then? Her eyes flicked down to the ground, shifting from side to side suspiciously. Still nothing…Maybe they were waiting until she moved.

She licked her lips nervously and took a few steps. No ambush rose to greet her. The room remained as silent and empty as ever. Lin took in a deep breath and held it, straining her pointed ears for even the slightest of sounds. She took another step, froze, listened, took another step, froze, listened…on and on, until she stood in front of the wooden chest.

Would the attack begin once she opened the chest? Linkali looked to Navi for guidance. The fairy stared back at her, looking just as confused. After taking another swift look around the room, the youth set her hands against the lid of the chest and slowly pushed it open. The hinges creaked softly, and the sound seemed to echo off the walls of the empty room, bouncing and doubling over itself. Lin stiffened, her whole body rigid and tense. She looked around again, then down into the chest. The Fairy Bow sat at the bottom, alongside a quiver of fine arrows; the ancient weapon seemed to glow with a faintly mystical light.

Linkali reached into the chest, keeping one eye on the quiet room. Her heart was thundering in her chest. Now she was sure that the ambush would start as soon as she picked up the bow, and her fingers trembled as they closed around it. The Hylian snapped her body upright again, glancing at Navi. The fairy hovered with her fists drawn up against her chest; at Lin's look, she opened her hands and gave a tiny shrug of cluelessness.

Holding the bow and quiver to her chest, the young woman's eyes locked onto the door at the end of the room. Would the monsters appear when she tried to leave the room? She inched forward, taking the tiniest step towards her exit. The fall of her boot seemed to reverberate through the empty air. Linkali flinched at the sound, and hesitantly took another, slightly larger step. That was followed by another, and another, until Lin was sprinting flat-out towards the door, clutching her treasures to her heart. Navi hummed behind her. Both girl and fairy were wide-eyed as they sped towards the door. Linkali thrust out her hand and slammed her palm against it, all but leaping through it and into the hallway outside. Navi zipped out in front of her.

The door slammed shut behind them, and Lin slammed her back against it as if to barricade it with her own body. She looked down at her hands and saw the Fairy Bow and it quiver resting safely in her arms. She'd taken them without a fight. There hadn't been a single monster in that room. All of that worry for nothing! The girl looked over at her fairy companion. For a few moments, all they could do was blink at each other in stunned silence.

Then, as if in response to some silent, hilarious joke, the two of the burst into loud, uproarious laughter.


"Up ahead, Lin—I can sense something!" Navi cried excitedly. Linkali glanced at the stairway with interest, toying idly with the Fairy Bow in her hand. She found in amazing—and almost a little frightening—that after spending a century and a half locked away in a chest, the wood of bow had not been eaten away by insects and its string was perfectly stretched and waxed. She jerked her mind away from the weapon in her grasp and turned her attention to her fairy partner.

"What is it?" she asked curiously. "The Sage of Forest?"

"I don't know if I'd be able to sense her, in that form," the fairy replied. "Those powers and auras were sealed away…"

"Is what you sense good or bad?" Linkali asked, setting her foot on the first step. Navi hesitated. "You don't think Phantom Ganon could be waiting for us up there, do you?"

"Certainly not," Navi told her. "Ganon banished that abomination to the space between dimensions. No." She drifted ahead a bit, and Lin followed after her slowly. "No," she repeated. "I'm not entirely sure what it is I sense. It's nothing evil, I can tell you that much; at the same time, though, it's not exactly saintly. I'd say neutral…erring on the side of good."

"It might be Sri," Lin said, sliding the bow diagonally over her shoulders so that it rested alongside its quiver on her back. "Do you think?"

"We'll find out shortly, I suppose." Navi paused at the top of the staircase, waiting for the youth to catch up to her. "Just keep your guard up, Lin—we can't be sure of what awaits us." Linkali nodded in agreement and took the bow from her shoulders. One hand gripped that, while the other strayed towards the handle of the Hookshot. Her heart began to beat faster as she stepped onto the circular platform at the center of the large room.

The chamber was silent, save for a small scuffling noise from beneath the platform. The Hylian youth padded towards the middle of the room hesitantly, her head sweeping left and right as she sought the opponent that was sure to appear. Navi bobbed beside her, her bright blue glow casting some of the only light in the vast room. Linkali walked to the far end of the platform and peered down off the side curiously. She could almost see something moving around in the shadows on the floor, but it was too dark to be sure. She flicked her hand to gain Navi's attention, then pointed down. The fairy's light happened to illuminate a rickety-looking ladder on the side of the platform, and Lin started down it slowly.

She probably could have jumped down without hurting herself too seriously, but that "probably" was not a risk Linkali felt like taking that day. The ladder creaked and groaned in her hands as she descended, and the shuffling sounds from the floor rose to a fever pitch. Lin felt the hairs on the back of her neck start to rise. Would she have to duel in the dark, with Navi's glow as her only light? But her companion had said that she sensed no evil in this part of the Temple. The girl kept her attention riveted on what she could see, figuring that the darkness that covered this part of the Forest Temple was just like the clouds over Hyrule: There was no changing it, so it was pointless to complain about it.

Navi drifted around below Linkali, casting her blue light over a piece of the ground. Lin looked over her shoulder at the fairy as she climbed down, listening to the scuffling noises rustle through the dark. Her feet touched the stone floor softly, and her hands returned to their former positions on her weapons—just in case. But no sooner was she tensed for action than she saw something out of the corner of her eyes that made her reconsider her plan of action. Something had darted at the edge of Navi's light, a swift flicker of black.

It had looked like a mouse's tail.

Lin crouched down, resting one knee on the ground. She heard breathless pants just ahead, and the pattering sounds ceased. She leaned towards the darkness. "Sri?" she whispered hopefully. "Sri, is that you?" Navi looked from girl to shadows in disbelief, then floated slowly further ahead. Her light touched on a narrow crevice in the wall, out of which a mouselike tail poked—a tail that was too large to belong to any mouse. "Sri?"

"Sri is Sri," a squeaking voice replied quietly after a few minutes of tense silence had passed. It came from the crevice. "But you…how you know Sri's name? How you know where to find poor Sri? Poor, hungry, lonely Sri."

"Riido told me where to find you," Linkali replied. "Come out."

There was a pause. "Sri is scared," the Kirikiri girl squeaked. "Sri does not trust you, strange stranger. Sri does not want to come out, not unless Sri knows you can be trusted. Many things in here try to hurt Sri…very scary place. Oh—Sri is lonely, but Sri is scared. Want to go back to forest, be with other Kirikiri, be with friends."

"Friends," Lin echoed to herself. She paused in thought for a minute, then reached down the collar of her mantle and pulled out the amulet Riido had given her. She held it towards the small hole in the side of the platform. "Sri, I'm a friend of the Kirikiri," she said. "Look—I have an amulet to prove it to you."

She heard an echoing sniff from the crack in the wall. The mouse tail disappeared, and after a few moments of muffled grunting, a Kirikiri face poked out of the narrow opening. It was a girl's face, with the rodent features typical of one of the mouse-children. Her hair was a strange shade of green, scruffy, and streaked with cobwebs and dust; it was kept back with what looked like an old, black hairband, and two curls of it curved under her pointed, mousey ears. Her dark blue eyes darted from the skull of the amulet to Linkali's face, and after a slight hesitation, she sniffed the amulet. Sri smiled warmly.

"Sri would like to get out of this place," she said.

Linkali grinned and waited for the Kirikiri girl to extract herself from her hiding place. Sri clambered up the teen's side, perching on her shoulder and rubbing her cheek against Lin's. Lin started back up the ladder calmly, glad that she had found the Sage of Forest unharmed. "You have shining bird with you," Sri pointed out excitedly, jabbing a stubby finger at Navi. "Shining bird—is really real?"

"Yes," Lin replied. "That's why Riido gave me the amulet. Because I showed him and the rest of the Kirikiri that shining birds were real." Sri nodded, hopping off of the girl's shoulder when the top of the platform was within reach. She sat back on her haunches and waited. Linkali crouched beside her, smiling.

"You are friend of Kirikiri," Sri told her, pushing her twitchy nose against Lin's affectionately. "You are friend of Sri."

Linkali balked, calling her mission to mind. Struggling to keep a conspiratorial edge off her smile, she grinned at the Kirikiri girl. "I want to give you something, Sri," she said. "Think of it as being like an amulet—it's just something to show that you and I are friends." Sri—intrigued, like any child is at the prospect of a present—sat up a little straighter and held out her paw-like hands eagerly. Lin laughed as she reached into her pouch and retrieved the Forest Medallion. "Here you are. Take this, as a symbol of our friendship."

The green medallion sat in Sri's upturned palm for a few seconds, then swiftly melted away and vanished into the Kirikiri's skin. Sri opened her mouth, probably to ask what had happened, and let out a shrill, terrified screech. Blinding silver light erupted out from the mouse-girl's body. Linkali squeezed her eyes shut and flinched away from the brightness. Her heart hammered against her ribs fearfully; she hadn't been expecting anything like this to happen. She heard Sri's cry cut off as the Kirikiri struck one of the poles at the edge of the platform, and cringed. The light died away as instantly as it had flared into life. "Sri? Sri!" Linkali cried as she raced towards the side of the platform.

A small child sat in a loose huddle against the pole, her head bowed. As Lin approached, though, she lifted her eyes and blinked in curious wonder. Her eyes flicked from Linkali's face to the Master Sword sheathed at the girl's hip. At first, a tremendous grin lit her round face, and she opened her mouth as if to speak; then, as she got a better look at the youth, some of the wild excitement faded and an edge of sadness dulled her smile. Linkali knelt down in front of her.

The girl sitting there was definitely not a Kirikiri; she looked like a normal Hylian child in every way. Her bright blue eyes were the same as Sri's, and her hair was the same color and style. She was leaner than the stocky mouse-child, though, with the long, straight limbs and the sure hands of a young child. She wore a dark green shirt with long sleeves, with a soft, green jumper overtop. Her close-fitting boots came up to her knees. As Lin watched, the girl gave a sudden twitch and her eyes widened—as if she had remembered something very important; she checked behind her swiftly, and let out a gusty sigh of relief. She turned back to Lin with a smile.

"I wasn't quite expecting that to be so…violent. But I'm glad that's over and done with," she declared frankly. "How many years has it been? You know—since he…" She trailed off sadly.

"One hundred and fifty," Linkali replied. The girl stared openmouthed.

"You mean…to tell me…that I've had a…a mouse tail for nearly a century and a half?!" she burst out, slamming her hands down on the platform. She shuddered and gave a disgusted groan. "Ugh! Can you imagine?" Before Lin could say anything, she grinned, seeming to forget her discomfort instantaneously. "So, you must be the One, then."

"Yes, I guess so," Lin answered. The child grinned even more broadly.

"Would you give me a hand up?" she asked, holding out one of her hands to the older girl. Linkali helped pull the child to her feet, noting with some surprise that the girl only came up to her hip. She was even shorter than Tali, although she looked to be the same age. The small girl began dusting herself off and straightening her clothes, combing the spiderwebs from her hair and setting her headband more firmly behind her narrow-pointed ears. "By the way, I'm Saria. And that trick with the Medallion was pretty clever."

"I'm Lin—actually, Linkali, but I go by 'Lin'." The Hylian youth grinned. "And thanks. I figured it would be a good way to give it back to you."

Saria winked. "You've just unsealed your first Sage, Lin," she said happily. "Doesn't that make you feel so accomplished? Oh—listen to me jabber on and on!" she blurted out before Lin could answer the question. "I'm like an old lady sometimes. Can't be helped, though, I suppose. Anyway, I'm supposed to take you with me. Take my hand!"

Linkali, a little confused by the friendly young Sage's random shifts in attention, obediently wrapped her hand around Saria's. Navi settled down on Lin's shoulder. The youth felt something pushing against her, shoving her upwards in a column of bright light. The Forest Temple spun beneath her as the group of three sped away.