Whew! I've been getting lazy....Well, lazier, anyway.







It was probably late into the morning by the time the sun had risen high enough to stream its rosy fingers through the crude doorway of the hut. Still half asleep, Sheik turned away from the evil light of dawn, only to have his neck seize up with pain. Being cramped up in one position all night hadn't done a whole heap of good for his muscles.

"Ahh....ow..." Hissing a little, Sheik very slowly stretched out his spine as best he could. Lying still for a moment, as if just that much movement had drained him of energy, he let himself wake up a bit and remember where he was and what he was supposed to be doing. Taking a deep breath and mustering up the willpower to move, Sheik gingerly raised himself to a sitting position, unintentionally popping his back and several joints in the process.

It was then that he got the distinct feeling that he was being watched. Looking up from the floor, he tensed momentarily to see a small girl staring back at him, a white-knuckle grip on the big stick she wielded. She looked as if she was debating the wisdom and practicality of challenging the stranger, and running like the wind. While she gawked at Sheik, he noticed that her hair was tinged with green, and a small, winged orb of light hovered above her left shoulder. [Kokiri. So that's why everything's so small...] Deciding that sitting and looking at her without saying anything probably wasn't very constructive, he was a little surprised when she spoke first.

"Why do you wear such funny clothes?"

Well, THAT was unexpected. It wasn't really a question you asked someone who had broken into your home, that was for sure.

"They're not funny to me." Sheik answered patiently as he fixed a loose bandage on his face. He only showed his face around people he trusted absolutely. He didn't know why anonymity was so important to him; it just was. As an afterthought, he added, "I'm sorry if I've put anyone out; I won't stay much longer."

"Where's Mido?"

"Who?"

"The kid who's house you busted into."

"How should I know?"

She shrugged at that, and the light fluttered nearer to him, making the shadows in the small house flicker. It seemed to inspect him critically for a minute, then it wafted back to its master, and the girl's grip on the branch relaxed a bit. I the short span of time following, Sheik found himself drowned in questions.

"Wow, how come you're so tall? Hey! You have red eyes! What's with the red thingy on your chest? How come your clothes are so tight? Did you outgrow them? One of Stella's skirts shrunk once when she washed it, is that what you did? Where's your fairy? What's that stringy thing? Can I hold it? Why not? Aren't you hot with all those bandages? Did you hurt yourself? Can you cross your eyes? I can. See? ...How come you're in Mido's house, anyway? Where'd you come from? How'd you get here? Are you here to kill the monsters? A deku baba almost bit my foot this morning, but I hit it with my stick. You should get a stick or something. How come you're not answering me?"

"You haven't given me the chance!" Sheik snapped, a little sharper than he'd intended. He glanced at her apologetically. If she'd even noticed, she was undaunted.

"What are you, anyway?"

"A sheikah."

She blinked and cocked her head to one side. "What's that?"

"Well...We're a little like hylians."

"What's a hylian?"

Sheik rolled his eyes. [They lead sheltered lives, don't they?] *sigh* "They're....like kokiri, only grown up. You know, taller."

"Like you?"

"Yes."

"What's the difference between hylians and shiekahs, then?"

He winced a little as yet another person butchered his species' name. "There are lots of differences. We just look similar."

"Oh." She stared at the floor for a bit, as if searching for something else to say. Sheik stood and made his way toward the non-existent door. Without warning, the kokiri brought her small branch down to block his path, at a very potentially painful level. Sheik jumped back half a step and gasped at his...near miss.

"Where are you going?" The girl gazed up at him a little more sternly than before.

"I have to get to the Forest Temple."

The light above the girl seemed to jangle softly, and its glow intensified. She looked to the light for a moment, then back at him. "I don't think you can go there."

Another frustrated sigh issued from behind his facial bandages. "I have to; please move."

"You can't go into the Lost Woods, I mean. You'll turn into a monster, and nobody needs that."

"Sheikah are unaffected by such enchantments."

"It's still off limits to outsiders..." The girl paused in her lecture, seeing that the stranger didn't seem to be paying attention to her at all, and was focusing his eyes on something outside.

"Hey, are you listening to me?"

Instead of answering, the tall man simply looked at her a moment, raised a fist to shoulder level, and threw something at the ground. She was fast enough to cover her eyes before the flash of the deku nut blinded her. When she put her arm down, the hut was empty.

"I'm afraid I must insist." came a voice from across the path. She spun to see the sheikah wave to her before he started off for the Lost Woods' entrance. Sheik was mildly amused at the wide-eyed, open-mouthed kokiri as she fumbled for words and ended up just opening and closing her mouth periodically. [At least she stopped talking.]

Coiling his legs under him, Sheik sprang straight upward and hooked his hands over a fence rail to pull himself onto the high ledge that would lead to the woods. He paused to kick the gossip stone nearby.

"The current time is 8:45 a.m. Nice weather for this time of year, isn't it?" Gossip stones were on friendly terms with the sheikahs, their creators, and were always up for idle chatter. It was rumored that the semi-sentient statues were originally meant to act as spies, but apparently, over time they had devolved into little more than chatty clocks. Though they were very fine clocks.

"It's lovely, though we could use some rain." Sheik said as he half walked, half crawled through yet another log tunnel. He emerged in a small clearing; the trees and undergrowth were much thicker here, it looked as if the place hadn't seen a forest fire in centuries. [No wonder it's so easy to get turned around in here...]

"Someone really ought to map this place," Sheik muttered to no one in particular. It was oddly silent for a forest, and a little intimidating. After around half an hour of meandering about in the woods, he realized that, perhaps, coming into the woods without enlisting some sort of guide had been a really stupid idea. [And I was JUST in a kokiri village, too.] While he wouldn't become an unsavory nasty, there were plenty of monsters regardless who would probably adore some filet of sheikah... Having a harp as a weapon didn't do much to ease his fears, either. Nothing had made any attempt to eat or otherwise mangle him so far, though; that was nice.

Wandering in the woods with nothing much to think about made Sheik aware of something else, too. He'd made a long trip the day before, and then slept in his clothes in a tree-hut. He felt icky. Not to misunderstand, he wasn't obsessed with cleanliness, he and Zelda used to play in the mud all the time. However, he was the one who always washed the mud off in the nearest stream or other water source as soon as possible. Stale sweat and the mandatory 'road grime' weren't very comfortable. And it certainly didn't smell that great.

Just as he was beginning to mentally complain about this, he emerged in another clearing, this time with a sort of spring/fountain at one end. [That water sure looks nice...] And it did, especially to someone in need of a bath. He didn't have any soap with him (how many people carry that around with them?), but the water would at least get rid of some of the grit and sweat. [Why not?]

Checking, rechecking, and then checking again to make sure he was alone, Sheik walked back over to the spring and began unwinding his myriad bandages. Then he emptied his void-thing-where-travelers-keep-their-stuff, since it didn't seem to work if the owner wasn't wearing anything. That's physics for you. He set his now-poe-filled bottle, cache of deku nuts, and harp under a conveniently placed tree, along with his coils of bandages. Folding his shirt and body glove, he set those down and gazed at them for a moment, regretting that he wouldn't have time to rinse them out, too. [Oh well, can't have everything...]

The water was unusually warm for a spring, though it was enough to pierce the calm of the forest with a 'brr!' sort of yelp from Sheik. After he got used to the temperature it was rather pleasant. The spring was amazingly deep, too, and had a back wall of sorts made out of granite blocks. [Pretty. I wonder what this was supposed to be...]

He had been in the water for little more than five minutes, and had finally gotten a few sore muscles to relax, when a rustling of the bushes across the clearing made all those poor muscles tense up again, not to mention allowing Sheik to snort a good deal of spring water up his nose. Peeking over the lip of the fountain, he spotted the author of the noise, who was now not twenty feet away. [A skullkid. Shadows! I'm out in the middle of freaking nowhere, and I STILL can't get any privacy!] The skull kid, for his part, appeared to be innocently passing through, and for a minute Sheik thought that if he just stayed quiet, he would go unnoticed.

Luck, however, didn't seem to be running with him. Maybe the gilding of his harp reflected the sunlight, or the red in his clothing stood out against the vegetation. Whatever the reason, the skullkid was nearly to the opposite entrance to the clearing, when he stopped, did a double-take, and decided that whatever it was under that tree deserved closer inspection. So, over he skipped.

With a mental groan, along with some very colorful mental expletives, Sheik took a gulp of air and dunked under the surface to avoid being seen. [Please go away, pleaseohpleaseohplease...There's nothing interesting here; you're going to leave, you're leaving, you're gone. Poof! I guess telepathy isn't my thing.] By this time his lungs were beginning to burn; he hoped that thing wasn't looking in his direction...

*gasp*

...And back under he went. That idiot skullkid was still there, rifling through his belongings as if he owned them. Sheik went through his options. Teleportation was out of the question. No way was he teleporting naked, there just seemed to be something wrong with that, and teleporting under water was generally a bad move under any circumstance, as one had a tendency to drown oneself between here and there. [Hmm...] Meanwhile, the skullkid was staring at the water, trying to work up the gall to check what that sound was. He was sure he'd heard something, and if it was something dangerous, he'd just as soon know what it was. Crawling over to the fountain's edge, he chanced a glance into the water. Much to his surprise and utter terror, he found his gaze matched by a pair of big sanguine eyes staring up at him from below the surface. A moment later, the eyes, and the head attached to them, were above the surface, with generous splashing, soaking the skullkid and leaving his own eyes glowing dim with fear. His pace slowed a bit as he realized that the monster in the spring wasn't a monster at all, even if it WAS a little weird looking.

"Well?" Said a soggy, annoyed, once-again-embarrassed Sheik, arms folded over his chest, and with a look of pure venom on his face.

"...Well what?"
"Aren't you going to run away screaming now?"
"Why would I do that?"
*sigh* [It WORKS on hylians...] "I'm kinda in my skin, here. Could you trouble yourself to scram for a few minutes, at least, while I get dressed?"

The skullkid mulled over this situation, then its eyes glowed brighter. "Mmmmmmmnope. Can't say that I can."
"Look, pervert, I have somewhere I have to be today. I can't sit here all day."

The sprite ignored him. Instead, the skullkid eyed Sheik's rather worn-looking gilded harp. "Ooooh, purdy. What is it?"
"It's a harp, leave it alone."

The skullkid's eyes positively sparked at that comment, so he did the only thing any respectable skullkid would do in this scenario. He picked up the harp, and began plucking random strings.
"I just said don't touch that! Put it down!"

No response.

[I had to go and open my big trap...] "By the thirty-nine exquisite hells of the Fierce One, don't make me come over there!" Sheik's embarrassment was quickly dissolving into rage at seeing his beloved old harp treated so carelessly.

The skullkid was having a grand old time. "Heehee. Nifty sounds...What's with these peg things? Is that how you tune it?" Sheik was just about to issue another slew of threats regarding the un-requested tuning of his instrument, when...

*SNAPoing!* With a little musical groan of anguish, one of the thinner strings gave out under the tension of the peg Skullkid was fiddling with. For Sheik, that was the straw that broke the bale. Indecent or not, his harp was in pain, and he'd be damned if he was going to let some punk forest imp vandalize his stuff right in front of him.

"I SAID 'PUT IT DOWN', AND I MEANT PUT IT DOWN! NOW!" Leaping from the spring with a roar, Sheik probably scared a few years off the poor imp's semi-mortal life right there. He looked seriously un-amused, and that was about the time the skullkid decided that he'd had enough of playing with the crazy blond man's harp. Setting the instrument in question very gently on the ground, the imp took off in the opposite direction as fast as its stick-like legs would carry it. [Hooligan...]

Giving his harp a thorough going-over, Sheik decided that that broken string and some scratches in the already-chipping gilding were the worst of the injuries it had sustained. Getting dressed and replacing his 'valuables' in that-void-thing-etc., he resumed his search for that darn temple.

[You'd think something as big as a temple would be easier to find.] He was rewarded for his aimless meandering about forty minutes later, when he finally found the Sacred Forest Meadow more or less by accident. [About time.] Grinning triumphantly, Sheik ventured out into the clover, heading towards what appeared to be some kind of roofless hallway.

*AROOOOOO!*

[@%#$%!] Sheik spun on his heel just in time to see a wolfos dash out from the underbrush. The lupine circled Sheik predatorily and with a certain primal smugness at finding an unarmed traveler all alone.

[What else could go wrong today?]





Sorry this took so long, and it's still short. This isn't a bad stopping place for this chapter, though. ;) The next one'll deal with the temple (finally!), and probably some other stuff.