I dreamt of Impa trapped in the well. I screamed down towards her to reach her and my feet left the ground, sending me tumbling down the well. The shadow enveloped me quickly, but then the power of light within me repulsed it, and I was covered in an egg of light floating within the darkness. I clenched my hands as I gathered more power, I asked for more, for more. The sages answered and lent it to me. My body felt electric with it and I shot a fierce jet of light which illuminated the darkness. In the recesses of the Darkness I found Link sprawled on the floor.
"I'm so tired." He whispered, defeated. I hushed him and told him all will be alright. From my bag I gifted him the Ice Arrows I had longed to give him. He took them into his hand and at his touch they burst into light… Arrows of Light. My heart raced and I felt my dream become vivid. It all started to make sense.
"Shoot him!" I shouted to Link. "Shoot him with the Arrows!" Link looked to me as if comprehending my words and I was suddenly thrust from my sleep.
It was thundering outside. The rain pecking furiously at the small glass windows of the Inn. The fat woman looked at me and turned away, still sore at our last meeting. I stood to leave, finding that I had recovered some strength since my struggle with the Shadow from the Well. As I approached the woman, she kept her face turned from mine as if she could not see me. I dropped a heavy amount of rupees onto the table next to her.
"Thanks." I whispered, as I turned to leave. The woman inspected my donation and she stood to see me out. I felt a shawl wrap around me, and I turned to see the woman smiling at me.
"Be safe out there." She said. I nodded and returned her smile, accepting her kind gift, and made to head into the rain.
My heart was still pounding from the dream, and my senses were lazy from sleep. I thought groggily as the rain soaked through my clothes to where I should go first. I need a weaponsmith. I headed to Death Mountain. The heat of the mountain dried my drenched clothes and I made my way towards the peak. As I climbed to the summit, I saw the hole in the wall which led into that precious fairy fountain Link and I had given ourselves to. The thought of it aggravated his absence. As I stepped further into the summit a huge Goron rose from its slumber and looked down at me with squinted eyes.
"I hear you make weapons." I began. His voice boomed and echoed into the valley.
"Yooooou coooooould sayyyyy thaaaat." He replied.
"I wanted to know… can you make me some arrows?"
"AAaaaaarrooooooows?" He asked. "Depeeeeeeeends on how laaaaaaaarge the booooooow." He bellowed. I pulled a regular arrow for him to inspect and he leaned down to see it. He took in a deep breath and then burst loudly into laughter. A large gust of wind rushed past me as his laughter ricocheted off of the cliffside. He held up his extremely large hands.
"I haaaaaave suuuuuch biiiiiiig haaaaaands. Iiiiii Could nooooot haaaandle such fineryyyyy." He said. And as if to prove a point, he pinched his fingers together to hold the arrow and it crumbled under his mighty grip.
"Know anyone who could?" I asked. He thought for a moment, rubbing his massive finger on his chin in pensiveness.
"The Kooooookiriiiii have aaaaaaalways been excellent craaaaaaaftsmen…" He responded.
"Thank you!" I shouted from my cupped hands. The great Goron nodded and yawned loudly as he curled up to resume his nap.
I sprang to my feet to head to the Kokiri forest. I ran through Goron City, knocking over some unsuspecting pedestrians in my wake, to take the shortcut into the Lost Woods. I ran, haphazardly through the forest, encouraging it to pull me into the center of the Kokiri forest, but to my surprise I took no wrong turns, I passed through the tunnels as if by instinct until I stumbled upon a quiet clearing with a solitary post in the center. A pigtailed girl stood before it and I rushed to interrogate her.
"Hey, can you tell me-" I began.
"We all turn into Stalfos, someday." She said. "Maybe even you, if you stay here long enough." This girl resonated strange as she turned her face up to the light shining through the tree tops. I didn't know if she was speaking to herself, or to me. I took a cautionary step back.
"Um…" I began. She looked at me then, and took in my presence for the first time.
"You're looking for that sorrowful man, aren't you?" She asked. I shook my head. I had no idea what she was talking about. She sighed heavily and looked again to the treetops.
"I fell in love with a man…" She strangely confessed. "He hated people, but he loved nature. In my selfishness I asked him to live with me here, in the forest." She looked around at the emptiness of the clearing. "But he was not of the Kokiri, and he succumbed to the darkness of the Lost Woods." I saw, then a terrible sadness behind her eyes.
"I'm so sorry." I replied in honest sympathy. She nodded and accepted the sympathy.
"I will forever be a child. I will never grow old, yet I have loved and lost more than you can know." She said. I assessed her then for what she truly was. An immortal child, cursed to never live a full life. Had I always been so disenchanted with the Kokiri that I never understood the depth of their being? I searched for something to offer her, but found I had nothing. She sighed deeply and approached me then.
"I'm sorry, I had just assumed you were looking for that man. But now I see I was mistaken and I ran away with my thoughts. I apologize." She said sincerely.
"I- I seek a weaponsmith." I said, shaken by the strangeness of the conversation. "To make arrows." I heard a strange crowing and I quickly turned to inspect it. A blue chicken flew into the clearing.
"Ah, I know exactly who you seek." She spoke. "Mido. He is the original craftsman of the Fairy Bow." The chicken came closer and I felt that the forest was playing at illusions with me.
"Thank you, I- is that a blue chicken?" I asked, perturbed by my delusion. She laughed.
"His name is Cojiro." She said. "He can lead you to Mido. He has a particular knack for finding suffering hearts. In fact, I have a feeling he is here to greet me today." She knelt by the chicken and offered him some Deku Seeds from a pouch.
"Have you seen Mido, lately, my friend?" She asked Cojiro. Well, this adventure had taken a strange turn. In search of a weaponsmith I had come across a chicken whisperer. Or a whispering chicken? Cojiro crowed in response and he flapped his wings like a child demanding to be picked up. The girl laughed. "Go ahead," She said. "He will take you to Mido." I picked him up tentatively and he adjusted his feet to comfortably roost in my palms.
"Thank you…" I said, before I turned to seek out Mido with the help of a weird blue chicken.
I didn't know how this chicken would help me, would he lay an egg when I got close? No, ridiculous, he was a cock, not a hen. I turned to take a tunnel and Cojiro flew from my hands to peck at the ground. I chased him, then from tunnel to tunnel until he led me into that sacred clearing of the Forest Temple. Cojiro made short work of flying short distances across the maze, but I was left to wrestle with those awful monsters from the forest. I haphazardly made my way across, ignoring the occasional hit from the brutes, as I was afraid I had lost sight of the damn chicken.
Cojiro waited for me patiently by the stairs, and in seeing me, he hopped towards the pedestal of the Forest Temple, where a sorrowful blonde boy fingered an ocarina between his hands. Cojiro crowed to greet him and the boy turned at the sound, jarred from his thoughts.
"Hello…" I greeted softly. Mido stood defensively.
"Who are you? Grown ups are not allowed in this sacred place." He said, unsheathing a small knife.
"My name is Sheik of the Sheikahs. I have come here to ask for your help." I held my hands up to show my palms in peace, and he returned his dagger to its small sheath.
"What could I possibly offer you?" He asked.
"You are Mido, the great weaponsmith?" I asked. He scoffed.
"I whittle a bit." He turned to look at the ocarina he still held in his hands, then held it out for me to inspect. "I made this ocarina." I held the small instrument in my hands and I recognized it immediately. It was the ocarina Link played in his childhood.
"But… this is Link's…" I said.
"Ha!" He shouted angrily. "It was mine! I had made it, and I gave it to Saria! Saria loved it dearly and then she gave it… she gave it to him." Mido said bitterly. His eyes becoming glassy and his face turning red with rage. I did not know what to do with myself. These Kokiri were quite volatile.
"What did she see in him, anyways?" He mumbled. "That he would be a man, that he was whole while I was deficient, to stay a child forever?" Mido cried now, and Cojiro cooed and pecked at his feet. I stared at him in fascination. I was silent, not knowing how to console him. The curse of being a child forever… never occurred to me to be as such a burden.
"Well, Link tossed away this ocarina like he tossed away Saria when he chose to… grow up. And Saria she… she's dead now." He grabbed the ocarina from my hands and turned away from me.
"Saria is alive, she is the Sage of the Forest!" I said, seeing an opportunity to comfort him. He scoffed and shook his head at me in disbelief.
"I don't understand you grown-ups. You think you know so much just because you're big. You're clueless. Saria is not here, and I cannot reach her, nor can she come back from being a Sage. That's dead in my book." He turned away from me to return to his sulking. "Find someone else to help you." I neared him and sat next to him. As small as he was he made me feel foolish and naïve.
"I don't think I can ask anyone other than the creator of the Fairy Bow for help." I pressed on. He turned to me and inspected my features, then wiped his dripping nose on his sleeve.
"What do you need?" He asked in curiosity.
"Arrows of Light." I responded. He sat quietly in thought.
"I can help you with the arrow part, but I don't know about the light. We specialize in the magic of Time, you see." He offered.
"I can take care of the light part!" I said jumping at the idea of being useful. He laughed deeply now.
"A Sheikah?! Making Arrows of Light? You have got to be kidding me!"
"I'm not." I said. "I-I'm not really a Sheikah." I whispered.
"Oh?" He asked in surprise. I had never needed to reveal myself to anyone in the past seven years, save for the happenstance between Link and I, but I knew that it was me who had to create the magic of light for the arrows. My heart quickened pace as I debated what I was about to do.
Searching around the clearing to ascertain we were alone, I began to unwrap my hand, revealing my tri-force. He gasped in shock.
"Princess Ze-" I covered his mouth before he could scream it to the winds, and I winced as I heard his voice echoing into the forest.
"You can't tell anyone, you idiot!" I hissed between my teeth. He nodded quickly and the seriousness of the situation began to dawn on him.
"The Light Arrows… are for the Hero of Time?" He said, quick to jump to conclusions.
"Yes, they are the final blow to returning us to our original time." I said, baiting him. He took the bait whole and I could almost see the ghostly image of Saria dancing in his eyes. It was as if I had breathed the breath of life into him, and he sprang to his feet.
"We need Deku Sticks." He said.
"Oh I have… let's see…" I pulled out a few twigs and he scoffed at me.
"Not those!" He pointed to the Forest Temple. "Big Deku Sticks."