Yeesh. I keep letting this slide too long. I WILL get it done. Eventually. ^_^;



*ka-BONG*

His harp, despite his over protectiveness, could withstand just about any stress or torture inflicted upon it, and whacking an overzealous wolfos into submission was right up its alley. Too bad the same couldn't be said for its owner. Sheik was wearing out fast; he'd kept up a steady barrage of vaguely musical attacks whenever the animal came within swinging range for over ten minutes without doing much damage. He just couldn't get at the blasted thing's back, and thocking it in the skull didn't seem to be doing much good.

"Had enough...*pant*...yet?"

Diverting his attention to his only plausible means of escape, Sheik tried to find a relatively easy-to-memorize high ledge. The ones walling in the maze were sadly non-descript, but they would have to do. The one on the right had a vine growing along its side, and Sheik quickly tore his eyes away from the predator to study it for a moment.

*growl*

Catching movement in his peripheral vision, Sheik whipped his harp up to block the wolfos' lunge, nearly knocking him down, and that would have been disastrous. The wolfos seemed to sense its prey tiring out, and was steadily making its attacks stronger, less playful in nature. It was an excellent strategist, Sheik had to give it that much credit, but he had an ace up his proverbial sleeve. Swiping at it to buy time and a little room, Sheik tried to let himself relax enough to slip into the void, not an easy task considering he had a hundred-fifty pound carnivore leering at him as if trying to decide what bits to eat first. Focusing his concentration on what the ledge and vine looked like, Sheik could feel himself melting into the void, slower than usual, since he was panicked. It was oddly comforting.

He saw it before his mind realized what was going on. The wolfos had seen its meal for the next few days slipping away....somewhere other than where the wolfos could get at it, and leapt for the sheikah's throat. Sheik's concentration was broken, but by that time he was far enough gone for the void to pull him in on its own. He caught the light glinting off of the beast's sickle claws, and was almost immediately enveloped in cool darkness.

It was when he noticed he was just floating there that his heart leapt into his nearly removed throat again.

[Goddesses, what did that ledge look like?!]

He was quickly losing his momentum, as it were, and the longer one remained in the void, the harder it was to get out again. Besides that, it was actually rather on the frigid side in there (or out there, depends on how you look at it). For a few moments, it was cool and comfortable, but longer than that, and one's body heat was siphoned away by the empty space.

[I could freeze in here....]

Angry at himself for losing the image like that, and even more peeved that he was falling to pieces mentally about it, Sheik forced himself to recall his destination. A fleeting moment of indecision and some much chillier appendages later, he had it. More or less. Putting the image in the front of his thoughts, he willed himself to "move". Relief washed over him as the familiar sensation of reentry made itself known.

[Beautiful.]

Then it stopped. Sheik suddenly found himself squished between two planes. He could see the ledge, though it was extremely blurry and distorted. Eyes don't function quite properly when they're in more than one dimension at once. [@#$%, I'm caught!] Looking at the ledge before him as best he could, he tried to pull himself from his dimensional snag; after a fearful bit of struggling, he managed to drop down to the well-earned perch, all particles present and accounted for.

"Phew! You were too much trouble, you know that, dog?" He said drowsily, gazing down at the confused and frustrated wolfos. "I could do with a short nap, but you've taken up so much time, I'll be lucky if he's not here yet." The wolfos really couldn't care less about Sheik's scheduling ordeals, all it knew was that the odd looking animal that it had ALMOST taken down was now out of reach, and it was still hungry. Casting a final dour glare at the one that got away, the wolfos trotted back into the underbrush to continue its hunt.

A little shaky from his mishap in the void, Sheik avoided the moblins, or "glorified bacon", as they were affectionately known, by walking along the tops of the maze walls, jumping when he needed to. Waiting for the last goon to walk by, he hopped onto the ground and darted up the awkwardly small steps leading into a narrow corridor. And, as luck would have it, an unusually sizable moblin with an equally sizable club nearly filled the width of the hallway.

"Well, doodlebugs..." Whether it had just seen Sheik, or its miniscule brain had finally recognized the moving purplish object to be a person, was moot. Sheik was abruptly knocked several feet back to land in an exceedingly undignified position on the ground when the pig-guard slammed his club against the ground, sending visible shock waves rippling through the dirt. However, its simpleness was its undoing, as anyone with two brain cells to rub together (both of which the moblin was sadly lacking) could figure out that to avoid the waves, all one had to do was run in a zig-zag, and then slip past the guard, since he was too cumbersome to turn around in there. All of this, Sheik did without hesitation. He wanted to get this over with. Ahead, the Sacred Forest Meadow could be seen, and in it, the ruinous Forest Temple.

[Finally! And no sign of him yet; goddesses, I'm good.]

Climbing a nearby tree, Sheik nestled himself amongst the branches and dozed. He was tired. Completely bushed, but the hard part was done with; all he had to do was teach Link the warp song and he could get out of there. He tried to decide what to do first once he got home: sleep, eat, or take a bath. All three possibilities seemed rather high-priority...

[That must be him now...]

The pained bellows of a dying moblin announced Link's arrival just as well as any fanfare. [Well, what's the point of having a sword if you don't use it, I suppose...] Link tentatively stepped out into the clearing, shield strapped to his arm and sword at the ready. Flecks of blood and ichor graced his clothing and countenance; it must not have been a clean kill...

[Here goes nothing.] Sheik dropped from the tree he was occupying to stand before a surprised Link. [You'd think he'd expect things like this...] Sheik cleared his throat and began.

"The flow of time is always cruel...[Tell me about it...]
Its speed seems different for each person, but no one can change it... [Well, technically...]
A thing that doesn't change with time is a memory of younger days... [Unless, of course, you have Alzheimer's...]
In order to come back here again, play the Minuet of Forest." Taking out his slightly battered harp, and trying to ignore the broken string, Sheik picked out the notes of the song, which was actually rather on the short side to be considered a song at all... Link copied the pitches, and, after hitting a few bum notes, managed to get it right. They ran through the melody a couple more times to make sure Link remembered it. [No reason not to, it's only two measures long...]

With that, Sheik backed up a few steps and called a deku nut into his hand.

"Link...
I'll see you again..."

During the flash, Sheik teleported back to his home in Kakariko, leaving a puzzled Link standing in front of the Forest Temple.