Much of the morning went sort of like this:
"Where are you from?"
"Piss off." He didn't know.
"How old are you?"
"Piss off." He did not even know when his birthday was.
"What do you like to do for fun?"
"Piss off." Not die.
All Link could do was think about how to heal his broken leg and his shoulder as quickly as possible. Woaphie frowned in frustration, "You're no fun!" Duh. Living the life of a Link was not fun; it was full of day-to-day struggles for survival. And nothing helped him survive better than anonymity. That and a full belly.
"Tell you what..."
"How did your voice get all nasty like that?" Woaphie interrupted him.
Link smiled, though he could tell his scarface unsettled her, "I'll answer one question if you get me some more bread." The one wasn't enough to settle his hunger, but it was enough to calm his gastric protests.
The young girl jumped up in excitement and dashed out the door. That was one way to get her to shut up; though talking to the annoying, hyperactive girl was a small price to pay for free food. She returned not a minute later with half a loaf of bread and a juicy apple.
"Here!" Woaphie handed both food items to Link, who then hungrily inhaled the bread and left nothing of the apple but the stem. She giggled at the way Link crunched through the apple's core, "Mum said there's more food for you if you want because the old man gave her rupees to pay for your stay here."
"Huh…" an idea began to formulate in his head.
"So now you have to answer two questions now!"
"Urgh, fine," the full stomach made Link feel a little less hostile towards the girl. She was just some lowborn living in the back alleys, what harm could possibly come from answering her questions? He asked her, "What do you want to know?"
"Well, I'd like to know how you got so many scars."
"Fair. It's the first thing people notice about me. That and me voice." It didn't come about overnight. For as long as he could remember, Link had been fighting to simply survive in this dump. His voice and scars were reminders of his many close calls with death. Though he could not remember every single detail of his poor, wretched life, there was a distinct memory attached to each scar. "I fight a lot. Bigger Links like to pick on smaller Links because… well, because they can."
Woaphie's eyes widened, "Is that why my Mum won't let me outside to play with the other kids on the block?"
"That's question number two." Woaphie pouted. "And yes. Links also don't like kids with names," he replied. Truthfully, Links loved kids with names because they always had something worth stealing and selling for a little bit of food.
"If I get you more food, will you answer more questions?"
"Uh, no, I'm not that hungry anymore, but I'll tell you what, I'm gonna change the game up a little bit. But first you gotta come closer," Link's words drew Woaphie in, close enough so he could whisper in her ear, "I'll answer any question you have for me if you can get me a red potion." The magical cure-all medicine healed all wounds and purged all illnesses short of death. "But you can't tell nobody, not even your mom," he added at the end.
The girl backed away, not happy about what he was asking of her, "How am I supposed to get one? I don't have any money."
"How much money did your mom get from the old man?"
"I don't know," she looked like she was hesitant to answer. "He brought a chest about this big, with all blue rupees," her arms indicated that the chest was about the size of a small dog. Link estimated that Sir Mawar had given the family at least two silver rupees worth in that chest.
"Just take four rupees from the chest. No one will miss it. Take them down to the Market Square and find an apothecary. They got the masks that got a long beak."
"I-" Link already knew what her answer was going to be, "I can't. I'll get in trouble."
"I'll be your friend forever." It was Link's final card to play.
A long sigh escaped her lungs, but then she nodded, causing Link's heart to skip with joy, "Okay." She sighed again to affirm her mission, "Okay I'll do it. And you promise we'll be friends forever? I can learn all about you?"
Link placed his right hand over his chest and raised his bandaged hand, "I promise."
"Okay," she repeated to him, and then again quietly to herself, and again as she opened the door. It was a clear sign of uncertainty, and Link knew by the time she exited the room that her success was a matter of chance, albeit a low one.
Alone in the room at last, Link began to plan his next move. The first thing he would have to do was to retrieve the rest of his work supplies, which were stashed just outside Hyrule's favorite whorehouse, the Desert Oasis. He would probably then spend the night at Safe Haven while contemplating his next move. As soon as he would leave the room, Link would become a fugitive from both the Crown and the Zellinks.
He sat up and lowered his good foot onto the ground. His broken leg still tinged with pain, but so long as the foot stayed off the floor, the pain was manageable. He hopped on his good leg toward the door, opening it and peering through. Nobody, good. The only person he needed to watch out for was Woaphie's mother. Keeping his head on a vigilant swivel, Link entered the short hall that led to the living room and kitchen. He hopped over to one of the two windows by the front entrance and saw the mother outside busily hanging her wet laundry on a clothesline. Perfect.
So long as the mother was preoccupied with her own chores, Link had time to scavenge the house for whatever supplies he needed to survive as a wanted boy. His eye flashed to the woodsman's knife that he stole from the Zawks earlier sitting on the dining table, and then to a broadsword, resting upright on display in the corner of the living room. Forget everything else. Link had struck gold.
The wide blade owned a plain, leather scabbard, and the round pommel of the hilt reached the nape of Link's neck. He separated the sword from her clothing, making the sweet symphonic announcement that the blade was naked. Although it clearly a sword made for a commoner, it still shined with a brilliant radiance like it was new. When Link held the sword with his healthy left arm, he found out that it was much heavier than normal and balanced towards the tip of the blade. Even an adult would have trouble wielding this sword with one hand. It would require two hands at all times for someone as small as Link, but too bad the grip was designed for one handed use. The unwieldiness was a necessary sacrifice for the durability. He was fed up with the number of times he had to rely on looting dead street thugs for reliable weapons, any weapon really. It was hard to tell how much the sword was worth, but it was for sure worth more than any one of the weapons he had previously held before.
Placing the blade back into her scabbard, Link hopped to the table using the sword as a crutch, grabbed the knife from the table, and slipped the small blade in between the bandage wrapping and the splint. He had to make it back to bed before Woaphie made it home.
When Link reached the bed, he slipped the sword underneath and then slipped himself underneath the blanket. Within the hour, he heard the sound of a door open and close outside the bedroom, and then heartbeats later, Woaphie entered the room huffing and puffing and closed the door behind her.
"So, how did it go?" Link nonchalantly asked her.
The girl looked pale and looked at Link like she had seen a ghost, "I am not doing that again!"
Link anticipated the good news, "But did you get it?" She withdrew a small vial containing the luminescent red liquid and handed it to Link. "Thanks." Gratitude was the least he could give her for sending her into a chaotic and dangerous part of Hyrule Castle Dump.
Link removed the cover of the bed and extended his broken leg, prepping it for the healing process. He opened the top and downed the bitter liquid.
The initial relief was instant and always pain free. The cool liquid instantly sent warm chills throughout the body at first. But it was never the case with a broken bone. One heartbeat after drinking the liquid, the broken began to send searing pain up his torso. "Gaaaaah!" he screamed as the bone in his leg snapped into its proper place. As his body began to heat up, beads of sweat started dripping down his face. He could also feel the muscles in his bandaged shoulder tighten, removing the pain once and for all. Once the bone was set into place, a cool chill relieved his body from any further agony.
A sudden gasp broke the silence as she stepped back in shock. Her eyes were glued to the ground, staring at the sword hidden underneath the bed. "What is my father's sword doing over here?"
"Uhh," thoughts scrambled through his mind as he tried to piece together a reasonable explanation. But before he could get the first word out...
"Woaphie!?" cried a voice from outside the bedroom, sending a rush of blood through Link's veins. He did not anticipate Woaphie's mother discovering the missing blades so quickly. Springing off the bed, Link reached underneath for the sword. By the time Woaphie's mother entered the room, he already squeezed through the open window. Her crying about her father's sword was the last he heard from her.
Link sprinted with the sword clutched tightly to his chest past a gang attacking a poor man, a thief burglarizing a house, a beggar donating his leftover food to an orphan, and a teenage girl washing the dishes for her sick parents. As the gang of thirteen year olds kicked and beat a shopkeeper for not paying his protection money, Link suddenly slowed to a brisk walk and he refrained from glancing over to the violent scene, only to avoid contact eye contact with the thugs. There was no need to draw their attention. The woodsman's blade hidden between the bandage wrapping and the wooden splint would not be enough to scare off a gang of thugs, and the sword would not be enough either. No matter what weapon he wielded, numbers and size generally won the day.
Tall buildings made sure these filthy streets were forever cast in shadow. No matter what time of day it was, the sun's light never seemed to reach the ground. Waste, filth, excrement, disease, and the occasional assassination victim littered the streets that squeezed in the spaces between buildings. The smell was strong and distinct and the air felt cold and clammy enough for a blind man to know he was walking through the back alleyways. A beggar groveled before the boy, who also had no money. Link narrowly avoided an arm that reached for his ankle and briskly walked past the stick thin, grime covered man. Further down the street were two Deku scrubs digging through a dumpster, probably looking for leftover food to sell to someone more destitute than them. Like he did to the old beggar, Link quickly walked past the opportunistic entrepreneurs and paid them no mind.
Once he felt that he was far enough away from Woaphie's house, he turned his eyes upward, searching for the tower as he walked. He stopped at an intersection, found the spire, and headed North along a long alley. Link's destination was only a few blocks that way. A young woman wearing a ragged dress scuttled past him and began digging through a pile of garbage, looking for sustenance that would delay her doomed and wretched fate.
The feeling of danger coursed through Link's body even before he heard a voice call to him from the shadows, "Lookie what we got here."
By the time Link drew his heavy broadsword from its sheath, it was already too late. A group of kids and their blue, scaly leader emerged from the darkness and flanked Link, who backed himself up against the wall. Better a wall behind his back than a hostile.
Link tossed the scabbard aside absorbed as much information on his environment and the ruffians in as little time as possible. On the outside, the gang looked like a bunch of kids slightly "older" than Link, the same ones that were beating the shopkeeper from earlier that day. They could not have been more than fifteen years old. Each of them wore a matching tan colored vest with no shirt underneath, matching black stockings, matching black boots to match the stockings. Link tried very hard to keep from laughing at their ridiculous outfits. This was a small gang that pretended that they owned the alleyways, but really all they did was beat homeless people for fun, and they even attempted to look professional while they did it.
The two boys on the left had mean looks on their faces, but their soft hands were only good for beating a corpse. They had yet to see any of their own blood spilt. These two would be the first to turn tail and flee. The freckled one next to them had bruises all over his body, so much that Link thought his skin color was purple with fair colored spots. He was as young as they come and clearly at the bottom in the pecking order.
The ugly Zola in the middle stepped forth from the group. His slightly darker vest and size seemed to symbolize his leadership in the gang. He was a full grown adult who used his age to submit the younger ones, who coaxed these children into robbing the poor and the dead. His sleek, blue body was designed to carry him swiftly through bodies of water. His fins on the side of his head were flaring, a war cry or something like that. Link could never tell if Zolas were always smiling with evil intentions or their mouths were just unfortunately designed to always grin. Their large, beady eyes partially embedded into their frog like skin only made their face look all the more ugly.
It was the same, tired old story of the gang promising a better life for the kids. All it took to subdue a bunch of children and be treated like a king was to wield the largest wooden stick and, in this gang leader's case, hammer some nails in it. And when one leader fell, two more rose to take his place. There seemed to be no end to these manipulative scumbags.
"Look at him, he's kinda cute swinging that toy," said the red headed boy next to the leader. Everything about him, from the way he smiled with an aggressive confidence and the way he postured himself, said he was the second in command. He was the bloodthirsty type, and he probably had seen the most combat out of everyone besides the Zola, though his wooden club was nothing more than a broken off leg from a table. Link planned on killing him first.
The two golden haired idiots chuckled with their lieutenant. They were brothers, one older and one younger, judging by their resemblance. It was always the older one that dragged his younger one into a petty life of petty crime. The taller, leaner boy towered over his younger brother, but had a confidence that had never been tested before. If he died, his brother, the youngest looking of the gang, would be sure to flee.
The Zola rested his jury rigged mace on his shoulder and chuckled with the raspiest and bubbliest of voices, a signature of the River Zola species, "That's a pretty weapon you got there. Mind if I try it out?" Judging from the smirks on his subordinates' faces, the leader had a genuine smile on his face. "You can barely even hold that sword," said the gang leader about Link's trembling arms, "Come on, don't hog it all to yourself."
Indeed, the sword was difficult to hold upright. For now, it was okay that Link looked like an amateur; a fight was just what he needed to practice with his new acquisition. Once again, he scanned from left to right, putting together a plan of attack and a plan of escape. When his eyes reached the youngest gang member, something else entered the alley far off in the distance.
Link needed to focus on the Zola leader, the most imminent threat, but … something was drawing his attention in his right peripheral. It had to be a stray fairy that lost its way, which was not an uncommon sight. No. There was a fight ahead of him, and the Zola was closing in.
But it wasn't just the fairy that drew his attention. It was also... a warm emotion, coursing through his spine, which then spread through his body and even caused him to blush a little. It reminded him of the feeling of eating a big, warm meal at the Hog's Head Tavern. But that wasn't it. No, the feeling was more foreign. It was a happiness that came from, belonging, whatever that meant.
A clang rang through the alley. The nails on the Zola's wooden club connected with the metal blade of the sword and knocked the weapon onto the ground. His hand shot forth and gripped Link's neck firmly and lifted him up against the wall. Being choked definitely brought his focus back onto the fishy breath from the leader's mouth and his slimy face. Link cursed the fairy under his breath and vowed to sell him or her to the nearest merchant.
If he were to survive that was.
Author's Note: Thanks for the reads and the comments! Was Miro Miro that mysterious fairy that Link saw? Stay tuned (and a juicy fight scene will be coming up!)