Chapter Two

K'arah felt sunlight on her face.

But, hadn't it just been raining? She felt warm and dry and was sure she was lying in a bed, but wasn't she out lost in the Vanishing Woods, fleeing her attackers…

'The Book!'

She opened her eyes and tried to sit up but found she lacked the strength. She was in a strange little hut of some sort. The atmosphere was warm and calming, and it was decorated with an odd mix of drawings by children and weapons of every manner. She lay in the only bed and her left arm was bound to her side. She tried to reach her left shoulder with her right hand.

"I wouldn't do that."

K'arah's eyes flickered to the only door where a little girl had just walked in. She was pretty and of delicate frame, and was dressed in a dark green jumpsuit. Amazingly, her eyes and hair were both green, and her elfin ears were very tall, pointing up and back all the time! She was carrying a bottle of some bubbling red liquid.

"You will reopen your wounds if you move around too much." The little girl said. "It took a lot of work to sew them up, and I know you won't let that work go to waste. By the way, my name is Saria."

"Where am I?"

Saria sighed and came inside all the way, letting the beaded hanging fall back into place over the exit. "You are in the village of the Kokiri, on the edge of the Lost Woods. I found you there early this morning. You were badly injured. I wasn't sure you would live."

"The package I had with me, where is it?"

Saria's lips twisted into an amused smile. "Somehow I knew you would be asking about that. It's there, on the table." She gestured across the small room.

K'arah's eyes followed Saria's gesture and, sure enough, sitting on the edge of a table littered with bowls and dishes of carved wood and brightly colored pottery, sat the Book, still wrapped in its protective packaging. She relaxed somewhat, leaning back against the pillow and doing her best to smile at the little girl with green hair. "Thank you for helping me. I was sure I was a goner. You may call me K'arah."

"Cara… it's nice to meet you." She totally slaughtered the pronunciation, but the smile on her face was sweet.

K'arah smiled back politely. "What's that?" she asked, nodding towards the bottle the girl held.

Saria went into motion again. She bustled across the room and grabbed a small cup of poorly blown glass, wrenched the cork out of the bottle and poured about half of it into the glass. "This is a health potion. It will heal your wounds and put you on your feet again in no time, flat. I think half of it should do the trick. Drink up."

Frowning slightly at the potion, K'arah accepted the proffered glass and took a whiff. It smelled like cinnamon and wet dog. "What's in it?"

Saria rolled her eyes and pursed her lips. "I have absolutely no idea what's in the stuff. But I have taken it, and it does work."

K'arah was still mistrusting.

Saria picked the bottle up from the table and took a sip. Nothing happened.

K'arah brought the glass to her lips and swallowed the potion, trying not to taste it, as it was positively awful. Heat shot through her body as the potion slid down to her stomach and when the heat was gone, so were all her aches and pains. She shifted her shoulder experimentally and there was no discomfort.

Saria smiled. "There." She said in a no nonsense manner. "Now that won't heal you entirely, but it will do you a lot of good. You shouldn't move too much, you're still very weak, and don't even think about trying to use your arm."

Slightly amused by the girl's behavior, K'arah nodded. She slowly inched herself up wards into a sitting position. "Where are my clothes?" She asked, noticing that the garment she had on wasn't hers.

Saria turned from her task of bustling about the room and clucked her tongue at K'arah and the fact that she'd sat up. Frowning with displeasure, she responded, "In the wash. They were filthy with blood and mud and several repairs will need to be made. And before you ask, your weapon is in the corner, there." She indicated the Ashan'darei where it leaned in a cluttered corner near the main door.

"Again, thank you."

Saria nodded, the displeasure leaving her face. She continued moving about the small house for several more moments, picking up this and replacing it there in a generally tidying manner, before she moved to the door and pulled the beads aside. "Link, what's taking you so long?" She sounded like a hassled housewife.

"Pardon me, Saria! One thing involved in riding a horse is stabling and feeding it." Came a slightly surly reply. The voice was male, a low tenor of a warm timbre. "Honestly, woman, its just common sense!"

Saria positively bristled. "Don't you call me 'woman', you surly brat! I paddled your bottom when we were kids and I'll do it now, too!"

The man laughed. "First of all, I don't think you can reach my bottom anymore." K'arah heard the sound of a foot being set to the rung of a ladder and someone beginning to climb. "Second, you couldn't catch me let alone overpower me physically." Reaching the top of the ladder, the foot steps stopped for a moment and were followed by the booming thump of something heavy hitting wood. "Thirdly, do you really think I wouldn't reciprocate?"

Saria gasped, but K'arah could hear the mocking humor in the sound. "You wouldn't DARE hit a child!"

"You're no child, Saria, we both know that." Pushing the beaded strings aside the man stepped into the room.

K'arah found herself staring. She had been half expecting a child, but the man who entered the room had to duck to come through the door. He was at least six feet tall and he had yellow hair! Well, not yellow. His hair was the gold of sunlight on harvest wheat and that rare and sought after metal of the same name. His eyes were as blue as the summer sky and so vibrantly bright they seemed to glow. His skin was fair and his face was finely structured with a straight but slightly turned nose, thin and provocative lips, and kind eyes with a sense of calm assurance behind them. She could see that he was slim but well muscled in a way that bespoke quick strength, lithe and deliberate in his movements, and he moved as though he knew his own body well.

K'arah swallowed once and forced herself to blink. She had only seventeen summers. It was perfectly understandable for her to admire a handsome young man of a similar age. But why did she feel so flustered?

Her eyes were purple. They were large and slightly almond shaped and the color of amethysts and royalty, flecked with silver. Her skin had gained some color and looked golden bronze and tan and a light flush touched her cheeks. Her amazingly dark hair cascaded around her in curls and waves like a cloak of black velvet and she was positively swimming in one of his old shirts, which had slipped partly off one of her shoulders revealing a smooth curve of golden tanned skin. Her lips weren't blue with cold any longer, but were now a dark mauve, full and almost slightly pouty.

She was stunningly beautiful, Link thought, and she needed her clothes back soon, for his own sake.

"Saria found you in the woods this morning, barely alive. I helped her bring you here and tend to your wounds. I'm glad to see that you're looking much better. By the way, my name is Link." He smiled gently and moved to sit down on a small wooden bench next to the door.

The girl smiled back slightly. "I'm feeling much better, thank you both. You may call me K'arah."

"That's not a name I've heard before." Link commented as he pulled off his boots and set them aside. "Where are you from?"

"Far to the east." K'arah responded. "I'm from a country called Andor on the other side of the Vanishing Woods."

"Is that the same as the Lost Woods?" Saria asked. Link glanced at her in surprise; he had almost forgotten she was there.

"Probably." K'arah shifted slightly so that she was sitting more upright and grimaced as she did so, stilling her arm against her stomach. "My attackers chased me for quite a distance, but I never left the trees. I couldn't have gone much further than that afoot and pin-feathered. How far was it from here that you found me?"

"Not far, maybe a few miles." Saria answered.

"I'm probably only a week's travel on horseback from home, then. Maybe a few days more."

Link shrugged off the shoulder belt for his sword and hung it on the wall. "So what brings you westward, if I may ask?"

"I have something to deliver." K'arah responded evasively.

Nodding, Link moved to his table and picked up the dark fabric-wrapped bundle and moved to hand it to her. He stopped, however, when he saw the stunned expression on her face.

Her eyes locked on the package in his hand and then locked with his eyes. "How is it that you can pick up this package?"

Link frowned. "Why shouldn't I be able to? It's just a cloth wrapped bundle."

K'arah frowned consideringly at the bundle in his hands and sighed. "There's only supposed to be one person who's able to touch that package besides me." She locked eyes with him again and cocked an eyebrow. "And you are definitely not her."

He blinked. "Who is it for?"

"The Princess of Hyrule." K'arah replied, watching him closely. "Zelda."

(A/N) Took me a looooooong time to update. I kind of lost the inspiration for this story and just found it again recently. I hope someone out there is reading and enjoying this. Thanks!