Chronos inched toward the graveyard, engrossed in thoughts that, to him, made very little sense. He found himself drawing conclusions that were illogical, unreasonable, or just plain foolish.

Kali had been no help, although in truth he hadn't expected her to tell him anything useful from the beginning. He knew that Link, Rayne, and that annoying little fairy would want an explanation as to where he had gone and so as he hurriedly walked he thought of a suitable excuse.

When the small black feline reached the gateway to Kakariko Village's cemetery however, he found that his companions were gone. Muttering murderous oaths under his breath the cat found their tracks in the drying mud and followed them.

He found that the two sets of footprints eventually led to the door of Impa's house which, to his surprise, was open, the darkness inside waging a silent war against the daylight. He wiped his padded feet on the mat outside, depositing most of the muck onto the rough surface and then gingerly stepped inside the house, ears pricked forward alert for any sound.

The house was quiet and filled with the smell of sleep. The wooden shutters had been pulled shut to prevent the morning sunlight from entering the living area but the cat didn't notice; to him it was as bright as it had been outdoors.

With his night vision he finally spied Link still dressed in his green tunic, sleeping on a large pile of blankets in the corner of the room. The cat sat down next to the slumbering warrior, fully intent on waking and giving him a piece of his mind.

"Wake up you little nitwit," he growled, raising a claw extended paw into the air, "What do the words 'wait here' mean to you?"

"Don't!"

Chronos froze in mid-swipe and turned to find Rayne standing in the door way, "What?" he asked innocently, trying to lower his paw as inconspicuously as possible.

"Don't you dare you silly cat," she closed the short distance between them and swept Chronos off of the floor, "It took forever to get him to sleep."

"What did you do? Sing to him?"

"No." Rayne looked uncomfortable and Chronos would have raised an eyebrow had he been capable.

"I-I put a sleeping spell on him."

Chronos cocked his head to the side and only then did he catch a faint whiff of magic in the air, "Is that so? Then all the scratching in the world shouldn't be able to wake him."

Rayne glared down at him, squeezing him warningly, "Look, I never said it was a good sleeping spell."

The black cat shot her a scathing look while trying to wiggle out of her death grip, "So you're an abysmal magician, don't take it out on me."

Somehow the young girl managed to keep Chronos from getting away while crossing into the adjoining room she had just recently exited. She proceeded to dump the rather irate cat onto her bed without too much fuss and then closed the door behind her.

"You'll sleep in here tonight." She said, voice offering no chance for disagreement.

Chronos would have hissed at her for good measure but he discovered the bed he had been dropped on was comfortable. "He doesn't need to sleep you know," the cat proceeded to knead the quilted comforter, "He slept for seven years straight I think a little bit of wakefulness wouldn't kill him."

"Don't do that you'll fray the blanket." She considered her next words carefully before saying, "It has been a long night for all of us Chronos, and I think everyone could use a good nap, particularly Link."

"So what you're saying is you want him to sleep so that you can rest peacefully?" he was curled into a contended little ball, one eye opening lazily to scrutinize her. "What are you his mother?"

Chronos had enough courtesy to close his eyes under Rayne's sharp look but his satisfaction could not be so easily dampened.

"I'm not trying to act like his mother." Rayne said finally, seating herself next to him on the bed, "I'm just trying to do what's best for everyone at the moment."

"Oh?" Chronos snuggled deeper into the faded quilt but his tone remained sharp, "So you know what's best for everyone?"

Even with his eyes shut he could feel her annoyance. "I just can't win with you can I?" she intoned, collapsing backwards onto the bed.

"Don't worry over that too much, no one can." Except for Kali, but he refused to admit that out loud.

Rayne was silent, her hands supporting the back of her head. Chronos wasn't facing her but he could sense her bright green eyes observing him. She wanted to say something, or more than likely ask a question that would leave him rolling with laughter as he answered, but she hadn't seemed to have worked up the right amount of nerve yet.

"Do you-" Rayne faltered, then started again, "Do you think Link has any family here?"

Her quiet query surprised him into wakefulness. True, he had been anticipating her questions for some time now and had been certain to a degree that they would revolve around the young hero but he had not expected something as private as this.

"Why is it that you are so concerned not only with his welfare but also with anything surrounding him?" the black cat asked, ears perked in genuine interest as he awaited her reply.

"Well he is the Hero of Time, I have every right to be interested!" her tone had started convincingly indignant, but it had ended lamely, the light blush that was staining her cheeks effectively betraying her further.

"A word to the wise, kitten." His voice could hardly contain the chuckle it was holding back. "If you're going to lie don't do it outright, put a little of the actual truth in it, that way you won't choke on it when you speak."

"Oh?" she glared at him, face still red, "And I suppose you're the expert on lying?"

Chronos said nothing.

Feeling somewhat uncomfortable Rayne changed the subject. "You never answered my question-"

"Nor did you answer mine." The cat interrupted, staring coyly at her from beneath heavily-lidded eyes.

"Does he have family in Hyrule or not." Rayne growled.

Chronos decided against flustering her further and instead regarded her seriously. "I believe he does have some living family members, yes."

"Then why does he wear Kokiri clothing?"

'Off one subject and onto another.' He mused silently, "He lived with the Kokiri for ten years."

A curious expression was growing on the young girl's face, "But you said he has family, why would he live with the Kokiri if he had other places to go? Was he illegitimate? Or perhaps merely abandoned?"

The look on her face had changed rapidly, now it was troubled, her assumptions had obviously upset her deeply. She turned to Chronos for an explanation.

"Are you certain you want to hear this from me rather than Link?" the cat asked while he pondered to himself what the young hero's reaction would be to his disclosing personal information to an admirer.

Rayne sighed, testing her bottom lip with her teeth before replying. "I don't think he would tell me."

"Oh? A young, attractive woman who blushes more than she speaks? Of course he would want to talk to you."

The hurt in her eyes made him immediately regret his remark. "I'm sorry kitten." He said softly, "I didn't mean to sound so caustic. If you really want to know more about Link you should probably hear it from his mouth. He might not give the impression of a lighthearted youth but he is and once you know one another better he'll be more open to conversation."

Rayne was looking at him strangely, "Why do you keep calling me 'kitten'?"

Chronos blinked, startled, why had he been calling her kitten? "Just an affectionate title I suppose."

The raven-haired woman sensed his discomfort and jumped quickly to the other topic at hand, "Do you really think he will tell me more about his past once we become well acquainted?"

The cat nodded, feeling strangely relieved, "I can't promise you anything mind, the situation has become something less than predictable."

"Volatile is more like it." Rayne agreed dryly.

Chronos would have chuckled if her choice of words hadn't been so accurate. "In any case, I'm sure that if you rubbed him the right way he would spill some secrets."

Rayne's face turned a shade of ruby red Chronos had only so far seen on the Sacred Stone of Fire and spread down past her neckline, causing him to blink in surprise.

"Goodness kitten." Chronos' voice was deceptively mild, "The word 'rub' does not always suggest such intimate things."

"Oh shut up." She hissed, throwing a pillow over her face in an effort to drown out the cat's snickering.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The Old Potion shop looked as it always had; it's red exterior crumbling slowly into disrepair, its only door rotted through and home to an assortment of termites. The interior hadn't developed much either, except for a couple new layers of dust on the counter top and the utter emptiness that was the result of desertion. The shop had been lost to the flow of Time, appearing unkempt and uninhabited.

But Death knew otherwise.

He eyed the scene in front of him distastefully; the sunlight from the open doorway flooded upon the unused shop and accentuated every nook and cranny of its ruin. He shook his hooded head in what could have been sadness mixed with a great deal of contempt while he walked around the back of the counter. Moving past the litter of rats and mice he began to hit the wooden floor with the shaft of his scythe.

Slowly he continued the outwardly asinine feat, hitting one spot to produce a sharp thud before going onto another. Finally a different sound rang out, a dull thump that signaled a hollow beneath the floor, and he knew he had found the entrance.

The passageway was quickly opened to reveal a molded stone stairway, spiraling downward into an infinite darkness. Without so much as a pause Death descended, the shadows swallowing up any sign of him.

When he reached the bottom of the staircase he stopped, "Are you here, Old One?"

His deep voice echoed in the unlit room, ricocheting off of the unornamented walls. Bookshelves had once leaned against them he knew, and a cushioned rocking chair had sat near the hearth, there had been a beautifully polished table with intricately carved feet, usually piled high with worn books in the center of the room. But all of that was gone now, disposed of in a grief induced rage, only an ugly carpet remained, a threadbare mass of something that may have once been a beautifully patterned rug.

A dark specter pulled itself out of the black corner of the room, scrambling toward the cowled Death uncertainly.

Features materialized, white hair and a sharply angled face with a proud beak-like nose dominating over a thin-lipped mouth. The old woman sat before him awkwardly, watching him with glazed pale blue eyes. Eyes touched by madness.

"Take me?" she questioned, her voice high and squeaky from disuse, "You take me now?"

"No, Granny." Death's tone was soft but the sound caused the old crone to whimper and cower, "I have not come to take you."

"Why?" she tilted her head to the side, suddenly childish, "Why do you no take Granny away?" She giggled, whether her amusement was caused by her broken language or her referring to herself in the third person being unclear.

"Do you remember Malon, Granny?"

Granny froze, her laughter choked off so abruptly it was as though someone had wrapped a hand around her throat.

"You do remember, don't you?" he persisted.

"Bad!" she hissed suddenly, a spray of spit flying form her mouth as she turned tail and ran back to her corner. "No, Malon! Bad!"

Death sighed, having expected this from the beginning, but charged into his point unrelentingly anyway. "Soon, about a fortnight from now, Malon will come to you. When she does you must-"

"Bad!" Granny insisted, shaking her head venomously, "Very bad! No help, help once, very bad!"

Death was growing impatient, tapping a leather-gloved finger against his scythe. "You must tell her what happened seven years ago; you will explain everything to her in painstaking detail."

A stubborn streak of the old Granny came back into the insane crone's eyes, "No." she said determinedly, mouth set.

"You will tell her!" Death roared, dust falling off the ceiling. "You will tell her or I will make sure you rot inside this room neither dead nor alive for the rest of eternity! Do you understand!?"

Granny had clapped her hands over her sensitive ears when the screaming had started. When she was certain his tirade was over she nodded vigorously in agreement, hands still firmly clasped over her stinging ears.

Death disappeared, his mission had been completely satisfactorily, his presence there was no longer required.

Granny waited for a few moments before lowering her hands away from her head. When the cloaked figure did not pop back into existence she exhaled, releasing the breath she had been holding.

Even in the dazed clutter of her mad mind she knew that she had just done something irreversible, but whether it be good or bad she was unsure.

She remained seated in her corner and would have speculated further but a soft squeak broke her fragile concentration.

The sleek, gray body of a rat scampered into her line of vision, sniffing suspiciously at the air. Her mouth watered as she waited patiently for it to come closer. Then she pounced upon the terrified mammal, fingers digging into its slimy, wiggling little body.

Dinner, she decided as she ripped open the silenced rat and devoured it's still warm insides, was far more important than any frivolous promise made to some otherworldly being.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Chronos sat bolt upright, wide awake out of a dead sleep with his black fur standing on end. Something of considerable significance had occurred whilst he had slept, he was sure. He closed his yellow eyes and meditated upon it.

Death had come and gone.

He cursed angrily, jumping up from his sleeping position and trembling with unused adrenaline. It was too late, an event that should have been prevented had already occurred.

Rayne mumbled some incoherent dream words and turned over, catching the feline under her arm. Chronos allowed himself to collapse under the slight weight, her warmth causing his taut muscles to relax.

There was nothing he could do now, his carelessness had made certain of that.

"Perhaps if I had remained in the Sacred Realm." He thought aloud, but then shook his head, no, at the time that hadn't been an option. If only he could claim his true powers, then maybe he could go back and distract Death long enough for the appointed time to pass. Even that may not have made any real difference when he thought about it, the plan was too full of holes, Death would have found a way to slip past his grasping fingers.

All he could do now was keep Malon from discovering the truth. If he could do that then his lapse in judgement would be inconsequential.

He looked at the sleeping form of Rayne as she stirred slightly and hoped to the Goddesses that his blunder would go unnoticed for her sake as well.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Author's Notes: I know, I know, the chapter isn't very long (or very good for that matter), there is no huge plot development and it took me forever to get it posted.

First of all I am lacking in the editor department, Ryu-sama is a wonderful person for taking on the task in the first place but I simply don't have the heart to ask him to waste anymore of his time on Dreamers. Secondly, school is killing me, slowly but surely, and I have begun to spend all of my spare time on studying rather than writing.

Now that I have finished whining let me address those who were kind enough to review last chapter.

In response to The Pilot: Once again, never apologize for reviews being late; I enjoy hearing from you so the time delay doesn't register in my brain unless you mention it. Also I promised myself to take a look at your story unfortunately I haven't been doing much browsing of Fanfiction.net recently. I loved the first prologue even though I'm not big on Star Wars and I promise I will read the second.

In response to Girl With Many Names: Thank you for your kind words. I can understand why the flashback part confused you, I was kind of hoping for that effect when I was writing it ;). I admit to being highly amused when I first read your review (mainly because of the surprise I have stored ahead), but I assure you I love Malon as a character and would not dream of killing her off.

In response to Grrr666: How exactly am I supposed to respond to that monster? Thanks for reviewing (even though you really didn't mention the story) and it's a little late to go to the lake isn't it? I imagine the snow would encumber any attempts to swim.

In response to Ignorantly Grinning: Thanks for the compliment. As I said above I'm sorry this chapter took so long but I promise that chapter 18 will be up soon.

In response to GuruGuru214: I was surprised to find a new review after I hadn't updated in so long but it was appreciated none the less. I'm not quite certain what you mean by 'Dampe the grave keeper type things' but even if I did I couldn't give the plot away this early. It will come up eventually, just be patient.