Years Away
By Joker's Specter

Chapter Five: Three Apples and a Little Lady


Link sat down on the bed. What should he do now? What could he do? His life had been spun upside down.

After around ten minutes of sitting and thinking, his stomach started to make noises.

Twisting his face in frustration, Link decided that the best thing to do was to get some food. It wasn't productive, but at least it was something that didn't involve sitting around and waiting for life to throw another surprise at him. The boy wasn't one to eat much, but he had gone without food for almost two days, and he was going to need some before he left for the shrine that night.

Link stood up and walked out of his room into the long, bright, torch-lit hallway. He didn't know where he was supposed to go to get food, or what he could eat once he got to whatever they used as a kitchen.

He shrugged off the thought for the moment and started to walk in the direction he had hadn't traveled down before. The boy regretted not asking for a tour of the place. It would have made things a lot easier if he knew where he could go eat, so he didn't accidentally wander into some forbidden kitchen.

After walking past three doors that looked identical to his own, Link heard some sort of an argument going on inside the nearest doorway. He paused and moved a little closer, tilting his head to listen better.

"Father, please! Calm down!" yelled a girl's voice. It sounded a lot like Piper, except that Link couldn't be sure since he had yet to hear her speak loudly.

"No! All I do is show him loyalty, and he never even takes notice!" shouted a slurred voice. It also sounded very familiar to Link. He also detected the tell-tale signs that the person was drunk.

The voice continued. "He never notices! It should be me leading the army against Kain!"

Link heard the girl begging whoever the man was to calm down again. He then heard some glass breaking.

After a few seconds, Link heard the male's voice say, "I'm off my shift, so I'm going to sleep. Go play with Tifa or something." The slurred voice registered in Link's head, and he realized belonged to Tolgi, the guard.

Ten seconds later the door burst open and Piper ran out of the room, colliding into Link. Both of them fell back into the hallway and on the floor.

"Oh my, I'm so sorry! I wasn't looking where I was going!" explained an embarrassed Piper. Link could see she had recently been crying. Her eyes were red, and the obvious signs of tears remained on her face.

"That's okay," Link replied, climbing to his feet. He reached down to help Piper up, and then brushed himself off.

Piper fiddled with her clothes, removing any wrinkles, and checked to make sure the pony-tail she had pulled her light-blue hair back into was still in tact. Link noticed that she was wearing a different dress than before. It resembled some sort of a formal dinner dress.

"Thank you," Piper said, obviously still embarrassed. Her eyes refused to look at Link, instead focusing on the ground while she sniffed and cleaned her face off with the back of her hand.

"So, um... What happened?" asked Link, pointing to her red eyes.

Piper's face flushed even more. "Oh..." she said, trying to wipe her eyes with her hand again. "So you didn't hear everything after all? I thought you might have..."

"Well, I heard... But why was he acting like that?" asked Link, concern laced through his tone.

A shrug from Piper. "He had a bad day... Usually if my father has a bad day, he'll come to the room and drink. Then he starts to yell a lot before he finally goes to bed," she said quietly, still avoiding eye-contact.

"Your father? Does he hurt you at all?" Link questioned.

"No, no... He just yells," replied Piper. She sniffed and wiped at her eyes again.

Link could tell that she didn't really want to discuss what had just happened, so the boy decided to change the subject so something simpler.

"Say, Piper... Do you know where I can find something to eat?" he asked. He paused for a moment, then added, "I'm so hungry I could eat an octorok."

The blonde boy didn't really eat octoroks. He just wanted to make a joke in an attempt to cheer Piper up. Nobody in their right mind would eat an octorok.

Piper stared blankly at Link with her big, blue eyes. "A what?" she asked.

Link realized they must not have octoroks around their land. "Uh, never mind. But do you know where I can find something to eat?"

"Oh, yes. I can show you if you'd like," Piper said.

Nodding, Link said, "You'll be my favorite person in this castle if you do."

Even though the compliment wasn't that great, since to that point Link didn't much enjoy being around anybody in Keystone's castle, a red tint appeared on Piper's cheeks.

"Uh. The kitchen is this way," she said quickly, more nervous than before.

Link scratched his head and wondered if maybe she misheard him. Shrugging it off, he began to follow Piper as she traveled in the direction the hero had originally planned to go.

"So... What does your mother think of your father?" asked Link, walking up to Piper's side.

Stiffening a bit, Piper answered, "I never knew my mother."

"Ah, I'm sorry..." Link replied quickly, feeling guilty about asking her the question.

Piper's shoulders relaxed a bit. "It's alright. I never exactly knew my real father, either. Both of my parents died before I could remember. Tolgi took me in, though, because I guess he was my father's best friend. Even my earliest memories are of living with Tolgi, so I just call him 'Father', because that's what he is to me," she explained.

Link nodded to show he understood.

"He does a pretty good job of being a father, too," Piper went on. "That is...when he doesn't get drunk."

"Yeah..." Link said. It was all he could think of to say. He'd never had family relations, so he was the last person to give advice on it.

"My real name isn't even Piper, you know," Piper said, turning to look at Link. "It's just what people call me because I can play the flute really well."

Link's thoughts went back to his Ocarina that was being held somewhere in the castle.

"My real name is Shia. I'd rather be called Shia, but I guess Piper just stuck with me. Most people prefer it," the girl added, looking straight ahead again.

"So...do you want me to call you Piper or Shia?" asked Link hesitantly. Better to ask than to assume, he thought.

"I'd prefer Shia," she answered.

The two walked in silence for a minute. After it became uncomfortable, Link glanced over at Shia and said, "I didn't know my parents either. I wasn't supposed to."

This prompted an interested look from Shia.

"In fact," Link went on, "until I found out I was a Hylian, I didn't even think I had parents..."

The pair turned a corner and passed by two armored guards with heavy spears.

"How could you think that you didn't have parents? Doesn't everybody have them?" inquired Shia, staring right into Link's blue eyes with her own.

"No, not the Kokiri. They're born of the forest. That's where I got my clothes from; I was living with them. I grew up with them, thinking I was Kokiri, up until the day Navi appeared before me," Link explained.

Shia bit her lip. "Navi is that fairy you're looking for, right?"

Nodding, Link said, "Yeah. She was the catalyst for my adventure, and she stuck with me through it all. I owe her a lot." It made Link sad to think he may never get to see Navi, or any of his other friends again.

Shia went through a wooden door that was much larger than any Link had seen through the rest of the hallway. Following her, Link entered a room that could only be the kitchen.

"Well, here we are," said Shia, walking up to a pantry and opening the door. "We're welcome to anything in here. You have about an hour to eat before the chefs come in to prepare dinner for the King and everybody else. They serve the King first, then make food for the remainder of the castle."

"I see," Link said, stepping up beside Shia to look into the pantry.

"A lot of the residents in the castle will simply go to the market to eat dinner, just because the chefs take a long time to prepare the King's food."

Link's eyes ran over the pantry and saw many types of food stored away. Most of it looked appetizing, but he wanted something simple. He opted instead to just eat some apples that were piled high in a barrel near the front of the pantry.

"I usually don't eat a lot, so I'll just have a few apples," he said to Shia while grabbing three of the bright red fruit.

Link walked to a small table with Shia and sat down. The blue-haired girl sat on the side opposite of Link.

"Does anybody else eat with the King?" asked Link as he took a bite out of his first apple.

Shia shrugged and began playing with some loose wood chips on the table absent-mindedly. "No, not really... Mostly on special occasions, like the King's birthday," she answered.

It finally hit Link that somebody was giving him information very willingly. He decided to try to get some useful information out of Shia while she was in the mood to talk.

"Can you tell me anything about this 'Fairy Shrine' I keep hearing about? People talk about it a lot, but they don't tell me anything," Link said, biting into his apple again. Shia seemed like a genuinely nice girl, so he figured if he expressed his helplessness truthfully, she'd be more than willing to explain it all to him.

"To be honest, we don't know too much about it. Even the things we do know don't explain what the exact purpose of the Shrine is," said Shia.

Link hungrily ate into his apple some more, and then asked, "Can you tell me what you do know?"

Shia began chipping away at some more wood with her fingernails, breaking splinters off of the table in a very small area. "I suppose," she said quietly. "What I do know is that the Shrine is basically a large hole in the mountain behind our town. The town used its incredible healing powers to heal our sick and wounded, up until Fenrom died."

"Fenrom?"

"Oh, the previous King; Godoro's father. Once Godoro took over, he sealed it off to everybody. Nobody can use it without his consent."

Link raised an eyebrow. "That's horrible," he commented.

"It made him a lot of enemies, most notably Kain," Shia said, biting her lower lip. "It started a war. That's why he's been attacking us; so he can get to the Shrine."

The way Link so it, it should have been everybody's to share. But he didn't say so; he was mixed up in the town's business enough as it was. If he had a way to solve the problem, maybe he'd try, but until he got his freedom back, there was nothing he could do.

"The only safe route to the Shrine is guarded by Keystone's army. Not only that, but it's so well-hidden that most people forget where it is," Shia said.

"What's at the Fairy Shrine?" Link asked.

Shia smiled slightly. "It's the most beautiful thing you'll ever see, Link. Thousands of fairies reside there. To this day, nobody has been able to count all of them." She had a faraway look in her eyes, as if she were reliving a memory.

Link had finished his first apple by this time. He placed the core next to the two whole apples, grabbed a new one, and started on his second fruit. "Where do all of the fairies come from?" asked a curious Link. If thousands were there, then maybe Navi...

"Nobody really knows. There are theories...but people are still coming up with new ones all the time. One person even suggested that a lost fairy was split into thousands of bodies somehow," replied Shia.

Link started coughing on his apple. "What?" he managed to say in between his choking.

Shia's eyes went wide, and she quickly added, "But they proved it wrong; there are new fairies showing up all the time. That's why they can't count them all. Unless the one fairy is still shattering to this day, then it's a false theory."

Link stared at Shia for a moment, then relaxed. At least Navi wasn't being broken up into pieces, he thought to himself, more than a little relieved.

Shia stood up and hesitantly said, "I think I should get going now... My father is probably asleep at this point, and I should clean up that vase he knocked over."

"Need any help?" asked Link, starting his third apple.

"No thank you, Link. You should probably get some sleep so that you aren't tired for tonight," Shia said with a smile as she walked in the direction of the door.

"Hey... Shia?" started Link, rising to his feet.

Shia stopped at the door and turned to look back at Link. "Yes?"

"Are you going to be there tonight? Because I'm not sure that I want to be left alone with Tifa," Link stated, raising his eyebrow.

Giggling, Shia said, "I'll try." Then she left the kitchen.

Link sighed. He finished eating the remainder of his apple, then stood up and started to walk out, leaving two apple cores on the table. He got to the door, stopped, and stood there, pondering. After a beat, he shrugged and walked back to the barrel of apples and grabbed two more of the juice fruit.

"No harm in taking a few more..." said Link. He took a bite out of one and walked out of the kitchen.

!-M- -U- -N- -C- -H-!
!-M- -U- -N- -C- -H-!

Link walked around the hallways some more until he found himself making a bit loop. The only way out of the living quarters, he discovered, was one hallway that exited into the entry room of the castle. Sighing, he walked back to his room. He was about to go in and catch up on some more sleep when he became curious about something. The young boy thought back to the two guards he and Shia had walked past on the way to the kitchen. It seemed odd having two guards standing randomly in a hallway like that; they had to have been guarding something important.

Curiosity got the better of him and he walked back down the hallway until he reached a turning point. He peeked around the corner and saw that the two guards decked out in armor were still standing there.

A door was between them. They were guarding a room of sorts. Link wondered what could be in there.

Sighing, Link wished he had his Stone Mask. He regretted leaving them tied up with some of his other gear on Epona's saddle. A smarter hero would have kept at least one useful mask on him.

Link retreated, making a point to investigate further if he had the chance, and walked slowly back to his room. When he got there, he laid his head down and went to sleep so he wouldn't be tired for the planned adventure that night.


End: Chapter Five: Three Apples and a Little Lady