Alex stared blandly at the large, muddy fieldish thing. She was positive it was the demented lovechild of a bog and a grassland.

Her name, of course, was not actually Alex. The whole thing was Alexandera Tiffany Ryhian, and it did not suit her in the slightest.

The same could be said about her appearence, for the most part. She'd had glossy golden locks of hair going to her waist, which she had despised utterly.It was such a bloody nuisance when you were trying to get through a hedge to have your hair kept getting itself caught. She'd taken to braiding it, as her mother refused to let her cut it any further until she'd turned 13.

It was now in a remarkably short ponytail, kept out of the way where she wouldn't have to look at it.

And then there were the eyes.

One of the boys in her class had compared them to 'shimmering pools of sapphire loveliness.'

She had turned to him, slowly, the limpid pools in question narrowed with loathing, and she had charged forward, brandishing a textbook like a battle axe. This had earned her a very satisfying scream of terror and one rapidly retreating male.

At the moment, she was wearing jeans, wonderful practical comfortable jeans, a t-shirt with a faded cartoony koala that proclaimed one should 'S VE THE K LA .'

She was not paying any attention to any of this at the moment, however. She was rather more concerned with the fact that she was no longer sitting on her couch like she should be.Carefully, as though the world might fall apart if she did it too quickly, she reached over and pinched her bare arm. Hard.

She failed to wake up.

Very slowly, a grin formed on her face. This was a perfect way to start the summer.

But it really wasn't making any sense. She'd just beaten Ocarina of Time, there was no particular reason to drag her in here. After all, she didn't have any mutant powers or somesuch. Couldn't even hold a sword, come to think of it. It was ridiculous.

There was no reason, she thought, scanning her surroundings and trying not to whoop with triumph. After all, she wasn't even really fantastical looking. If she was supposed to be a damsel in distress, they'd soon regret their choice.


A few hours later, she remembered just how much it had sucked to cross the field as a kid.

It had sucked like a vacuum.

It had sucked like the biggest suck-up in class.

It had sucked, in fact, like a bloody black hole.

It wasn't that she couldn't run very fast or for very long. She was good at that, really. It was just how big the damn thing was when you were really there. It had a vastness that she had previously associated with space and the ocean and things like that.

She trudged sullenly over a hill, kicking absently at some weeds. At her feet, something sparkled.

Alex blinked, thinking, and then she dove forward, cackling delightedly.

Rupees! One marvelous, glimmering ticket to... to... well, she didn't really know, possibly a warm bed or thirty bombs, she'd find out-

It dawned on her slowly that she had thrown herself upon a small clump of currency that was beautiful and awkward but first and foremost, sharp.

She screamed, startling a flock of birds out of a tree halfway across the field.


Still wandering, bruised and with a rather conspicuous angular bulge in her pockets, Alex tilted her head upward for a moment.

And cursed louder than the time she'd broken her arm. The sun was going down and she was rather certain that it was still the middle of Stalchild season. She lacked equipment of any sort and even though they were easier to kill than last week's cafeteria food, they shared one more similarity with the blobby grey casserole: they kept coming back.

A wolfos - she assumed it was a wolfos, what else made that eerie howling noise?- howled somewhere as the sun set.

She ran for it.


She half-fell into the tree trunk, wheezing like...something that wheezed.

A wheezle, She decided, giggling dazedly. A wheezing wheezle. She slumped against the ropes on one side of the small bridge, staring into nothing for a bit, panting. If they stuck some stalfos behind you on the track at school, you'd break records easily..

Someone prodded her arm.

She started violently, jerking her head up to the right.

"Wha-"

A Kokiri girl was staring solemnly down at her, a pair of yellow pigtails bobbing gently on either side of her face.

"Stalfos. All gone. ..All gone." She proclaimed seriously, then ran off, laughing wildly and in a way that was, perhaps, not completely balanced.

Alex blinked rapidly, staring after her.

"What- ..oh, crud." She breathed, getting up.

So she'd found her way to the Kokiri Forest. She'd just stay the night, then - they'd probably let her, if she explained. They were nice kids... for the most part. Couldn't help it if they never aged.

Hmm.

..Hadn't that kokiri looked a bit too...

too...

... Tall? Curvy? That wasn't the right shape for a kid.


Alex moistened her lips, suddenly uncertain. What if they were like..kids? She'd babysat for her cousins before.

Her eye twitched slightly, mind presenting her gleefully with the image of herself, tied to a kitchen chair, a plush animal stuffed in her mouth and miniature demons with markers assaulting her.

If nothing else, she'd be safe. It was only for the night.

Which was worse: zombies or evil children?

She sighed after a moment, and strode into the forest, choosing the greater of two evils.

Well, they hadn't shredded her yet. Or drawn on her face.

Alex stared contemplatively at the spoonful of brilliantly green mush in her hand. They were vegetarians.

She should've known that. It only made sense, really. She was sure they'd eat meat if they had a choice.

Actually, they did, occasionally. Sometimes they'd catch a fish or two. The boy across from her at the huge, picnic-ish table they'd led her to was babbling on about how he'd caught the biggest fish in the absolute history of the village. A girl - whose name she vaguely remembered as Marina, or perhaps Margaret- was poking him rather viciously and informing her that he was a bloody liar.

She sighed resignedly and shoved the green goop into her mouth, eyes closed bravely. It tasted rather spinachy, with just a hint of cheese. She chewed experimentally and swallowed, trying not to think about how they would get cheese in a forest utterly devoid of dairy. Alex tilted her head back, looking up at the stars.

She had asked to see Saria, simply because she had seemed to have the most sense out of the lot of them, but a girl had giggled secretively in an amazingly annoying sort of way and said that she'd 'gone off' for a bit.

Mido was also conspicuously absent. If Alex had been the romantic sort, she'd probably be thinking wistfully of all the stupid crud they could've gotten themselves into. She thought it most likely that the boy had landed himself in an extremely painful situation, either way.

She managed to clear her plate while the kids babbled around her. Something didn't seem quite right here, now that she paid attention. Like the proportion in an otherwise stunning painting was very slightly wrong.

Proportions..hm. It wasn't that she was much taller than them - she wasn't.

That was what was bothering her.

She was a tall girl, really. Always being pestered to play basketball for one person or another. They should've gone up to her shoulders at the very most.

But they didn't and that was what was worrying her. They all were looking at her, almost perfectly level. A couple were actually just a bit taller than her.

And she would've sworn that Fish-Boy was attempting to impress her like some of the more foolish boys from her class. She was getting the exact same strong urge to hit him with something - the big, heavy wooden salad bowl in the middle of the table was looking more inviting by the second.

A pair of identical girls came out at that moment, saving Fish-Boy from his fate, and carrying wooden platters. It was really quite fortunate that they didn't get fire keese or dodongos or... whatever out here. The whole place would take a couple minutes to burn, at the most. It was made of fuel. A large cheer came up as the girls - twins? - set the platters down into view.

She didn't really understand this. They had just deposited what appeared, in all likeliness, to be the dung of a Class A Green Pudding Beast. It was jiggling and slightly transparent, whatever it was. One looked creamy green, suspiciously like the wobbly stuff you'd get in the deli department of most groceries - the ungodly spawn of a jello mold, a salad and some miracle whip. It had smallish blue flecks dispersed sparingly throughout it, and was a small, humble blobby shape.

The other was a great, brilliantly pink mountain of a similiar texture. It was an opaque, warm pink, with a pink carnation lovingly set right next to it - on closer inspection, it seemed to be growing from the platter - and also had what looked like a crown of deep red dots.

The girls began depositing a lump from either of them on the kokiri childrens' plates, apparently from some earlier-determined choosing. When one of them reached her, she stared expectantly, holding a small wooden ladle-thing that had little green chunks on it.

"Mint or raspberry?" She said in a curiously light tone, tilting her head.

"Um," Alex muttered hopelessly, staring at the lump in horror. Someone elbowed her.

"Watch i-" She began to snap, then froze, startled to discover that Saria had seated herself in the empty spot on her right.

"Go for the raspberry." She said in a low voice that managed to be cheerful and utterly unquestionable at the same time. "The mint's all chunky."


Author's Note Version Five Billion: May First, 06

Edited this AGAIN, my god. Fixed some typos and rewrote some bits so Alex is a bit more mellow. (Read: a bloodthirsty freak)