After three minutes of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, Saria wheezed back to life.

Sitting up, she coughed water out of her lungs and attempted to regain her senses. By her side, Link stood with a look of concern.

"Don't go checking out on me, Saria."

Like the worrisome sprite she was, Mari flew all around her child's face and examined her.

"You good? Eyes and ears working? Nose still smells?"

Saria wanted to respond, but her lungs felt the need to hack up more liquid. After another fitful session of coughing, she gave a thumbs up and spoke in a slightly raspy voice.

"I'm good. Thank you."

"Oh thank the heavens! Please stop cutting these things so close!"

Still a little groggy, the girl tried to recall what had happened. Last she remembered, she was underwater, and had just escaped being digested by a giant leech. Wait, she could remember one more thing, after she escaped the creature, she couldn't breathe. She looked down at her torso and saw only green, no blue whatsoever. So had she just escaped drowning? Her chest ached, perhaps from Link's attempts to rescue her. That boy had saved her? Surely he couldn't have committed the act Zelda shown him to have done. Saria looked into his deep blue eyes for a long moment, and surveyed his expression. At first the boy grinned, but then his face turned to that of confusion. All the while, Saria continued burning a hole through his head. The sustained stare was beginning to make the boy nervous. Was something wrong with his friend? Still maintaining her gaze, the girl frowned.

"... you still haven't patched up your arm, have you?"

Finally breaking off eye contact, Saria smiled, and Link chuckled. She was fine.


"How much longer is he going to be?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, Saria. He's been gone for half an hour already."

After much insistence from Saria, Link got himself bandaged up. Since Saria lost her water tunic to the like like, the boy went back underwater to retrieve it. He had been gone for quite some time however, and that was enough to make his friends worry. The only thing Saria could do while she waited, was think over what Zelda had shown her. After watching her friend stab someone in the back, her mind was torn into pieces. What Zelda revealed had to of been true, but Saria didn't want to believe it. She had studied Link's face very carefully, if he had murdered someone, he was hiding very well now. She might would have been convinced that the boy was slighting toward evil if someone had told her before she nearly drowned, but now, she wasn't so certain. Perhaps she was blinded by him saving her, or it didn't show because he was happy she was alive, but Link seemed too chipper for someone who had just killed in cold blood. Zelda had no reason to lie, did she? Though, now that she thought about it, something was off about that woman. Perhaps, unimpressed with the girl's work, the princess was trying to motivate her in another way, or at the very least, sever any emotional attachment to the boy. That would not work, no matter what the crazy world could throw at them, they would always be friends. If anyone was drifting toward darkness, it was Zelda's family tree.

Sending droplets several feet in the air, Link burst from the surface of the water. Her thoughts interrupted, Saria sprang to her feet to greet her companion.

"Ooh ooh! Did you get it?"

After setting his feet onto dry ground, Link held the blue fabric of the Zora tunic in the air.

"Yes! Thank you Link!"

Saria rushed up to hug him, and as she did so, discretely observed his reaction. It made him somewhat uncomfortable, but that was how he always took an embrace. When she removed her arms from around him, however, she found red blood on her hands. Stepping around Link, she discovered he had taken a few more bites, though none were as bad as his first.

"You really should be more careful. Someday, you might not be able to recover from something like this."

Link had an uncanny ability to jump into trouble headfirst and come out on top, though he always did so with a fair share of cuts and bruises. When he had visited the woods after scaling death mountain, the boy was everything but unscathed. As if someone had been beating him with rocks, the boy arrived heavily bruised, several smaller cuts riddling his skin. Saria saw to it that his wounds were tended to before he left the forest, and when he did leave, the boy was good as new. Today was hardly different. If Saria had anything to say about it, Link wasn't going to set foot in the water until every last scrape was bandaged.

"C'mon, let's patch you up... again, heehee!"

Removing his bag from his side, Link fished out a some first aid equipment. He handed the tools and bandages to Saria, and then removed his shirt. Missing not one bruise, Saria surveyed and took note of Link's many small lesions. First aid practices were taught to all Kokiri, though none really wanted to exercise such procedures on themselves. Instead, they would always have someone else tend to them when they were hurt.

"So then, what happened?"

"Some crazy fish, five or ten of em."

"Wow, sounds like quite the scuffle. But you took care of them, didn't you?"

"Yup."

"Addaboy! Now what to do here..."

"Ooh, that looks like a nasty one."

"I think I can handle it, Mari. Let's see... this might sting a little."

With a pointed suture, Saria began stitching up one of Link's larger cuts, provoking the boy to wince a bit. She diligently threaded his gash up, and cut the string.

"There, now that wasn't too bad, was it? So, tell me, what kind of monster was it that ate my Zora tunic?"

"A like like, strange rubbery creatures that like sucking up people and eating their belongings."

"My, so he tried to have my tunic for breakfast?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

With a long roll, Saria wrapped a bandage around Link's waist to cover some cuts on his back. It was always easiest to get him to talk while she was tending to his wounds. Perhaps it helped take his mind off the pain, or he just had to get words out of his system. Whatever the reason he always opened up, he didn't seem any different than any other day. Maybe he didn't really kill the Zora?

"Just one more... hold still... and... alright, you're good to go!"

"Thanks."

"Anytime, Link. Now let's go take care of some fishies!"

Now patched up and cleaned up, Link put back on his tunic and his equipment. Saria evaluated all her interactions with him since she had woken up, and came to a conclusion. There was no way that Link had murdered anyone. She could read him like a book, anytime Link was up to something, she could see it by the gleam in his eyes. However, in the past hour, she saw no such gleam. 'Thanks for not disappointing me.'