Zelda walks, and a veritable symphony of leaves crunches underfoot. For a girl who has been purposefully sheltered between the convent in Castle Town and the pastured countryside surrounding her father's austere estate her entire life, the noise never fails to unnerve her. There is simply too much unfamiliar sound at once; she is well accustomed to the rise and fall of human voices and the echoes of hoofbeats on packed-dirt roads, but the forest, with its susurrus of wind in tall grass and leaves, bird calls, and her own crunching feels oppressively deafening.
A twig cracks somewhere off the trail. To her right, she thinks, but when she jerks her head in that direction she sees nothing. She unfocuses her eyes, even, just as Rusl—she can never think of him as merely her father's game tracker, when he is, to date, the only man that has ever treated her with true respect—had taught her during a stolen moment in the aviary, thinking that surely she would catch movement instead of form. Nothing.
Can twigs snap on their own? She supposes so. Maybe. Or it could've just been a squirrel.
Not once has she been out in the forests of her father's Faron estate alone, despite haunting it as a half-wanted scion for the greater part of her life. At fourteen, she is years out yet from attending her first hunt, and she can never risk meandering along the paths to meet a forbidden sweetheart under the heady cover of night. In many ways, her father keeps her on a short, chafing leash; true to form, he has expressly forbade her exploring unchaperoned, despite her passion for it. She has long stopped believing the myth that he will come to care for her beyond that of a distant guardian, grooming his wayward, accidental offspring into a halfway-acceptable heir. Luckily for him—and for her—her father will never hear of this particular escapade.
If there is anything…untoward…in the woods, she'll be alright. What had the old woman at the market told her, that whisper which planted the idea in her head to begin with? That Zelda was too young to turn, too old to keep. She hopes the crone spoke true.
The stories run through her mind like a shadowed brook as she trips her way over a tree root. The woods hold wolves, the woods hold deku scrubs. The woods hold spiders as large as a cat, or bigger. The woods hold skull kids. The woods hold stalfos from those that had wandered too far afield—although she's fairly sure that one is nothing more than a tale to scare children away.
If nothing else, the woods hold her imagination, and refuse to let go.
Tonight, she is at her breaking point. She needs the woods. She needs the sanctuary they offer, the freedom with which they beckon. She needs just one evening to escape the incessant whisperings of bastard child, the patronizing comments about her decorum and composure, the feeling that she is somehow other and therefore wrong that has haunted her since the day her father plucked her from the convent and told her that from now on, she will be blessed to join the ranks of the nobility despite the base circumstances of her birth.
(As if he wasn't himself responsible for those circumstances. Her father's hypocrisy fills her chest with more aching bitterness than even his perennial distance. She knows she's only a means to an end, and yet…)
Perhaps sneaking out of her room at twilight to walk the woods' twisting trails wasn't her brightest idea, however.
The amber light of sunset has long faded to an indigo gloaming that sets her to blinking, as if she could clear her vision of ambient darkness. She knows the leaves are colorful, gowned in red, orange, and gold, but it's becoming difficult to tell apart the many trees lining the trail. Only when she looks down at those leaves carpeting her current path can she discern: yes, this one is red. Maple.
She stops atop the maple leaf. Her feet are hot from movement and impact within her brown boots, the sturdiest she owns, and she realizes with a jolt that she does not know how long she has been walking. The path had branched four times over, and she had chosen the left at each fork. Shouldn't she be near the manor by now? Shouldn't she be able to see the lanterns lighting the wide, grassy lawn through the trees?
The tangled wood around her is as familiar as it has ever been. She could have walked this area twice or never. Stupid, stupid girl. String, breadcrumbs, blazes carved on tree trunks. Anything could have led her back to the manor safely. Why hadn't she marked her path?
The wind breathes coldly on her cheek, and she shivers, feeling beyond all reason that something is behind her. Because it could lead anything straight to you.
She spins around unsteadily, arms pulled in front of her, hands curled into loose fists. But there is nothing on the path. Just sticks, and leaves, and rocks, and roots like veins on the earth, and the yawning darkness from whence she came.
Yet she has the chilling, cornered-animal sensation that she is no longer alone in these woods.
Her heart thuds in her chest. She slowly drops her arms back to her sides, but keeps her feet planted in a steady stance, her knees soft and slightly bent. If anything comes out of the woods, she'll be ready for it. She's never punched a living thing before—feather pillows during preteen tantrums are hardly comparable—but she'll do it if she has to. She may be lost in these woods, but she refuses to lose her life in them. The giant spiders will simply have to find some other prey.
A minute of nothing but the wind crooning through greyscale foliage and the last ambient dregs of twilight giving way to new-moon, tree-blotted blackness passes; the tension in her body begins to ease, although she jumps anew at every groan of trunk or creak of branch on branch. For good measure, she turns clockwise in a slow circle, eyes peeled for any shadowed threat lurking out in the forest. By the time she has made it three-quarters of a revolution, she has nearly convinced herself that there is nothing out there. That it was all in her mind.
When she's turned around one complete revolution and another half, facing onward through the forest, she can see even through her spin-induced vertigo that there's a light ahead.
She's positive that light wasn't there before. There hadn't been one, surely. She had sought out the lawn-lanterns, hadn't she? She would have seen the light. She would have. Right?
Maybe she simply hadn't seen it. For the truth of the matter was that she had looked for a guiding light out of the woods, and here one was. No manner of pitch torch held in hand would shine so white, and no human could walk so silently. It must be one of the estate's posted lanterns.
She walks toward the light, slowly at first, and then gaining speed. It stands thirty paces away around the curve of the trail, its brightness throwing the branches lining the narrow path into stark relief. She isn't scared, not at all, but the sooner she can get out of this goddess-forsaken forest, the better. Yet her speed makes her hasty, makes her reckless. The toe of her boot hooks under a tree root as thick around as her wrist and she sprawls forward onto the forest path with a cry that echoes off the pitiless trees.
Hot pain radiates from her knees, her ribcage, the heels of her hands, her chin. It takes a long, wheezing-breath moment to free her foot and roll onto her back. Her ribs ache as they rise and fall with her every breath, but it's not like she has any other choice.
She must keep breathing. She must keep walking through the woods.
Her hands are dirt-stained and skinned, a hundred tiny ruby points shining wetly where she tried to catch herself and failed, but she pushes herself up with them regardless. The pressure of her raw flesh against the ground makes her hiss and squeeze her eyes shut. As she lifts herself up, a light gust of wind makes the blood- and friction-reddened patch on the bottom of her chin burn with cold, and she shivers. When she lifts her lids again, standing upright and sore, she opens them to darkness.
The light is gone.
She looks around wildly. Desperately. She knows she hasn't turned around. The root that felled her is right there, right in front of her boot. The light should be before her. But it isn't.
Wait.
If the light is gone…how is it that she can see the root?
She turns. Slowly. And sees the same light, its blue-white glow ghostly against the trees, on a path diverging from the left side of her own.
That's it. Something is definitely toying with her. Something that can move without a sound. Something that can move with the speed of the wind. Something that can move unseen—or, perhaps not even unseen, as she'd stupidly closed her eyes for long enough to give the thing an opening. She doesn't know what it is. With all likelihood, she can't fight it, can't outrun it. But she has to try.
She clenches her hands into fists—feeling the new tautness of her skin as she does, the cold having stiffened her fingers—and takes off at a run. At first, away. She scrambles into the dark. She leaps deerlike over fallen tree trunks, twists sideways to try to squeeze through a patch of brambles only for the tendrils to hook onto her skin and clothing, sending pinpricks of pain all over her body where they catch and hold. After a minute of scrabbling at the thorns caught in her cape, blind animal panic begins to set in. Forward is too much, is taking too long. She can't fight through the thorns or climb over the downed trees fast enough. If something is coming for her, it's going to catch her, it's only a matter of time.
She imagines some massive, fanged thing dragging her out of the brambles by her hair; struggling haplessly like a fly in a web; trapped between thorn claws and shadowy death; sharp, stabbing points digging into her skin on all sides until half of her is left in the brush and the other half is beyond all hope. Flight will not save her.
So she chooses to fight.
She pulls free from the bramble tangle with a mighty yank, positive that the dark green wool is studded with thorns. The extra decoration doesn't matter, it won't slow her down. She ignores the scratching through her clothing and against her skin. The little pains don't matter. They won't slow her down.
She sees the light, down a path she's certain it wasn't haunting before, but there's nothing else it could be with that blue-white glow. How could she ever have thought it was a lantern-post? No manner of earthly fire burns such a shade. Its uniqueness is its virtue and its downfall, for now, no matter how scared she may be of whatever creature casts such a light, she has a target. The hunter has become the hunted.
She charges.
The light shines brighter and brighter as she approaches, heart drumming near-painfully in her chest. It's just around the bend. The path will round, and the thing that has taunted and chased her will be revealed, and this will all end one way or another. The path begins to curve. She steels herself. Gravelly dirt crunches and shifts unsteadily under her boots, making her throw her arms out for balance, and then—
She skids to a stop in utter blackness. The light is gone. Again.
Well. She probably should've expected that. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. She turns around, expecting to see the light back the way she came, but there's naught but darkness that way. She swivels once again on her heel, the familiarity of the movement making her lips quirk upwards sardonically. Darkness, darkness—there. If she hadn't been looking for the light, she never would have noticed the trail on which it lurks; by size it's hardly more than a deer path. But the light glows down its length another taunting thirty paces away, so it's down that path she must go.
This time, she settles on a tactic of endurance and observation. Running herself ragged down any path the thing pleases will only result in fatigue and cold slowing her limbs further until she hasn't a hope of making it out of the woods. She's already trembling slightly from the constant adrenaline pulsing through her veins and that last sprint to nowhere. No reason to worsen that. So she takes it slow, places each boot down with care and all the quietness she can muster.
As she walks, she notices that the soil of this path is softer and more moist than that of the larger trail, with a profusion of knotted roots twining over its surface—presumably because the trees, whose branches hang claustrophobically close overhead, are so much closer. It's tempting to keep her gaze on the ground to ensure she doesn't take another tumble, but she needs her eyes up, needs to see every little detail about the light and the creature that carries it.
On her next step, something feathery caresses her leg, and she shrieks like a barn owl before clapping a hand over her mouth. She looks down frantically only to be met with…grass.
She drops her hand from her mouth back to her side, silently and slowly. Chagrin clenches her fists tight, although she keeps enough presence of mind to avoid cutting her palms with her own nails; another injury to her hands is the last thing she needs. With a heavy sigh—she's already ruined any miniscule chance of surprising the thing that she had, so she might as well throw caution to the wind—she steps forward once more.
The light doesn't seem to move from its place under her watchful gaze, but she finds as she approaches that it's far from static. It seems to fidget every now and then, making the shadows cast among the low-hanging branches dance ever so slightly, and even dim and brighten nearly imperceptibly at times. The pulse in its luminosity makes her narrow her eyes; that's not a flicker as a proper flame would do, it almost seems like something…alive. Which is worrisome. The only manner of creature she knows of with a potentially living flame are poes, and those weren't even rumored to be in the forest. She's read enough dusty bestiaries to know what it would mean for a poe to be stalking her steps: an enemy she cannot see; a scythe she cannot avoid; an encounter she cannot escape.
Yet not everything about this creature in the woods matches the description of a poe, and that intrigues her. It has moved around far more than she has been led to expect of poes, for one. And rather than harming her directly, despite having ample opportunity, it has simply taunted her. Tricked her. Toyed with her.
What manner of creature likes to play with their food before they eat it?
Abruptly, something rolls under her right foot as she steps forward, and she topples backwards. The air escapes her lungs in a woosh of shock and pain as she connects once more with the ground. Whatever it was that brought her down shoots off into the underbrush, but she can feel another bruising the underside of her left thigh. A hard, rounded lump. She lifts her leg gingerly, wincing, and picks the thing off the ground.
A deku nut.
Even in the low light, the shape and size is unmistakable. Bigger than a tea light, harder than a rock, with a fat, ridged seam running its full length.
For a deku nut to be here—for multiple deku nuts to be here—she must be deep, deep in these woods. Deeper than any has ever gone before. Deeper than any has ever returned from. For it is only in the most impregnable parts of the forest that deku trees grow, and she's never heard stories of them from hunters past. And she's certain she would have heard them, for the boisterous, bragging, blatantly staring at her hunters her father favors likely couldn't have resisted sharing such a thing at those banquet dinners.
As she sits on the forest floor, the damp cold of the earth seeping even through her thick trousers, ropey roots digging into her tired body, she imagines what it might be like to lay back and be swallowed up by the woods. Would she see the morning?
Likely not.
Farore, she wants to see the morning.
She pushes herself up. She pushes herself onward.
The light has been kind enough not to move during her crisis. At this point, it's only ten paces away. She holds the deku nut in her hands, worries it from palm to palm, traces its seam over and over. Five paces, and she can see that the light stands around a corner once again, much to her displeasure. Interestingly enough, it seems to hover at least double her height off of the ground. Standing on a tree branch, perhaps? She really, really hopes the creature isn't that tall on its own; there's no way she would be able to best its reach. Three paces away, and the toe of her boot bumps another deku nut. She snags it off of the ground, an idea brewing in the fatigued reaches of her mind.
One pace, and she hurls the first deku nut at the light as hard as she can through a gap in the trees before it has the chance to disappear yet again.
The nut flies directly through the light and hits some unseen tree trunk on the far side of the path with a hard thwack, and the rush of victory in her chest at her own strength muddles with panicked defeat at having missed the creature. The light jumps in place slightly, as if startled—then vanishes altogether, leaving her eyes burning and blinking to adjust to the darkness. Cool wind passes over her face, and she hears a giggle that sounds like it came from just behind her, high-pitched and taunting and gleeful.
Yet despite the frustration at her failure and the creeping terror of retaliation from a thing that can seemingly teleport wracking shivers down her spine, she knows something now that she didn't before. Because for a moment, for just a split second, she saw a shadow flicker in front of that pulsing, ghostly light.
It has a physical form. Which means that next time, she can hit it.
She swivels on her heel to find that the light hasn't reappeared behind her as expected. Nor is it on some even tinier side trail branching off from her own that she hadn't noticed before. Rather, it seems to be further down the path in the direction she had originally been facing, but much farther away than the usual thirty paces—perhaps fifty or so. Her punishment for the deku nut, she reckons.
She sighs again, and continues onward. The trail slopes downhill gradually, and she finds herself watching the ground constantly, fearing that she might fall again. The ground becomes wetter still, the leaves carpeting the trail so damp that they no longer crinkle beneath her boots. Instead, she slips on a water-slick patch of moss where a thin stream flows across the trail. Fortunately, the trees frame the path closely enough on either side that when she flings her arms out for balance, she catches herself safely against nearby trunks. The rough bark grating against her already skinned palms makes her wince. If she makes it out of the woods tonight safely, the first thing she'll do—before picking thorns out of her cape so her father won't be suspicious or taking a long, hot bath or even shucking her dirt-streaked clothes—will be to treat her hands.
She'll go to Impa, she decides; she'll wake her friend with an apology and something warm from the kitchens that Zelda will be afforded as the lord's bastard daughter but that Impa could never acquire herself as a mere maidservant, and tell the only confidant she has about her wild night. Impa will know how to patch her up. Impa will listen.
Down and forward and further she goes, and the path becomes so steep that she bends low to rest her weight further back on her heels as a counterbalance. She must be going down a true hill or even a ravine, the first in the forest that she's come across. Fortunately, there are always trees within reach for her to use as supports. Odd, that, given that she was under the impression that trees tend to thin out on slopes, but they seem to be growing thicker in this case, tangling and twisting up chaotically. Her head brushes into leaf-spangled branches more often than she can count.
Once, she runs directly into a deku nut still attached to the tree, and she rubs her forehead just as much as she rubs the nut after plucking the offender off its branch. It's an ultimately beneficial encounter, because she finds that there are few deku nuts to be found in this segment of the path after all; they seem to have all rolled to the bottom of the hill.
What had seemed like fifty paces stretches itself into sixty-four cautious, slippery footsteps before she finally reaches the bottom of the slope. She stumbles, unused to even ground, and tramples over a fleshy something that sends a musty scent up into the air upon impact. Dead hand! her mind cries. She reaches down. It's a mushroom. The scent of its spores kindles a growling hunger in her belly that she does not dare to sate. If she's going to die tonight, it will be from the creature or exposure, not reckless mushroom-eating.
The light is close at hand now, just across the expanse of this little hollow in the woods. Perhaps fifteen paces away. She could sprint it, could launch herself across the clearing with all the fearful tired determination she has left in her body and throw her deku nuts like a javelin. Instead, she takes a deep breath, and steels herself once more for the most reckless, terrifying action she has taken all night.
She steps off the path and into the woods proper for the first time.
It's a calculated risk by a girl who has never been a skilled mathematician. The creature almost certainly can see her across the open space, but she has half a hope in their ability, or lack thereof, to see through the trees. She walks a fine line between getting so close enough to the clearing that her attempt at stealth will be ruined, and straying so far from it that she'll be truly and irrevocably lost to the woods.
Her every step takes a lifetime to complete, as she lays her booted weight down as silently as possible. The ground here is more smoothly carpeted with grass, which is both a boon and a bane on her stealth attempts: quieter than the sandy soil of some of the earlier paths, but if she doesn't exercise enough caution, her footfalls will rustle the drying, dying grasses.
Without quick movement, her body temperature begins to cool, and she finds herself shivering even with the hollow acting as a windbreak against any chilly midnight breezes. She can feel it, now: the creeping, deadening ache of hunger and cold and fatigue weighing down her limbs, dragging back her movements, flagging her strength, and she realizes that her body may not allow her another chance if she misses the creature this time.
After a held-breath eternity she finally has made her way across the clearing. By this point, the light has gone from fidgeting to full-on dancing in place, and she wonders what might be going through their mind. Are they bored? Wondering where she's gone? Do they think she's gotten lost in the woods, and are simply waiting a little longer before finishing her off? Do they know she's standing behind the wizened, leafless deku tree at their back at this very moment, and are simply waiting a little longer before finishing her off?
She clenches her remaining two deku nuts as hard as she can in her frigid, stiff fingers. She won't let that happen. She doesn't know if her plan will work, if she'll even be able to escape the forest after stunning or defeating the creature, but she has to try.
She takes a deep breath. In. Out. Her chest shudders with her exhale. She takes a stance: one foot in front of her body, one behind. She winds her left arm back. She holds the line for a moment and lets the power build in her body.
Release.
The deku nut soars harmlessly through the light once again, and connects with the grassy ground rather than a tree with a mere thmp, courtesy of throwing with her non-dominant arm. The light jumps, higher than it had the time before. (Perhaps she really did surprise them?) And then the shadow flashes in front of its glow once more, a humanoid silhouette blocking the light of the living flame.
She coils her right arm back and hurls her last hopes at the shadow with all the power, wisdom, and courage she has left in her body.
The eerie, painful thudding of a missile into a body. The silhouette wavers, unbalanced—shadows dance chaotically across the clearing, thrown by the light they carry in their left hand—their arms pinwheel madly midair—and they fall.
She winces at the impact, sympathetic despite the fear and pride and dread all knotting together low in her stomach, but startles when the creature speaks. "Ow, Faron take you!"
"Sorry!" she says, automatically, before her brows furrow incredulously at her own idiotic politeness. She snaps her mouth shut.
"I guess it's alright," the silhouette grouses, and she watches in suspenseful anticipation as it sets down the lantern they hold: the source of her guiding light. Finally, the creature that she chased halfway across the forest will be revealed.
With the lantern on the ground, the creature's features are lit dimly from below, and she scans them up and down with greedy, awed eyes. They're short, shorter than her—although she is tall for her age—and clothed in a pointy hat the color of autumn oak leaves with its tail drooping, an orange tunic belted with wood and leather, and green pants a little too short for them that match the shade of the grass exactly. The camouflage is incredible; if she had crossed their path in daylight, she likely would have passed through none the wiser.
Yet nothing about them is quite so striking as their face: a mask, cast with a deathly pallor, painted orange eyes that seem to glow, and a wide, thin, altogether unsettling grin that stretches from one side of their head to the other.
They cant their head at her, and she shivers at the uncanniness of that dead, toothy smile tilting on its side. "No one's ever chased me down so good before. Threw a deku nut at me, either. You're…pretty clever."
"...Thank you?" Her acceptance of the compliment tilts upwards in pitch at the end, turning it into a question. This is the creature she thought was going to rend her limb from limb in the depths of the woods? "Are you a…skull kid?"
The mask doesn't change in expression, thankfully, but she can feel the petulant annoyance rolling off the creature in waves. "Hardly. I'm kokiri. Skull kids aren't even real."
"They're not re–what?! But the bestiary said—"
"Do you believe everything you read in books?" the creature—kokiri—asks tartly, and she feels her cheeks and the tips of her ears burn hot with embarrassment. "They're not real. Here, I'll prove it."
The kokiri raises their hands to their face, and she watches, heart in her throat, as they begin to lift off their mask. Seeing her expression—she imagines she must hold a similar countenance to a startled fawn—the kokiri slows their movements further, and she rolls her eyes at the taunt. She half expects the smile on that mask to grow wider, but it remains just the same as the kokiri raises it. Features emerge one by one. Tanned skin—human-looking—and pink lips—human-looking—and a pointy nose—human-looking—
Their face is that of any ordinary kid her age.
Her shock splays itself across her face, and the kokiri sticks their tongue out at her. "Whaddya think I would look like, a stalchild or something? Some shambling bag of bones with big bloodstained teeth?"
Zelda snorts dismissively (even though that is, in fact, exactly what she had imagined). "No."
"Well, I'm just a guy," the kokiri says. "A kokiri guy. Name's Link. Who're you?"
Zelda narrows her eyes. "I'm not giving any strange creature in the woods my name."
"We've got a suspicious one here!" Link tuts his tongue. "I'm not gonna steal your name, blondie." He sizes her up for a moment, and Zelda straightens under his gaze. "Wise move, though. Anybody can hurt you—can't judge it by pointy teeth or if somebody looks human. Humans more, really. Least with a skulltula, you know what to expect." He scowls past her for a moment, as if remembering something, and Zelda wonders if he's been wronged before like she has. "You really are smart."
Zelda does not know how to take a compliment in a situation like this. "...thanks." She pauses for a moment. "When I hit you with the deku nut. Did you say 'Faron'?"
"Yeah? What's it to you?" Link's words are aggressive, defensive, but his tone is curious. It's an interesting combination, like he's used to fighting fire with fire but hasn't lit his torch against her yet.
"You know that Faron is the region we're in, right? What did you mean by that?"
Link makes a mocking face at her tone, and Zelda realizes with chagrin that she just came off as rather condescending. "Nah, blondie, that's the light spirit here." When he sees Zelda's mouth open to question him, he smirks and holds up a hand at her. "Where do you think the region got its name? All the old books say 'the land of Faron', don't they?"
She nods mutely.
"Only dumb people that have never been in the woods would think the authors meant that the land was named Faron, not that the land's guardian was Faron."
Zelda resists the immature urge to stop her foot. "I don't think you get to call me dumb. I didn't get hit with a nut."
"Who says I was talking about you?" Link grins mischievously. "I never specified."
"Fair enough," Zelda says, slightly mollified.
A chilly breeze blows through the hollow, and Zelda shivers. Link shows no sign of being bothered by it, even with the bottom two inches of his calves exposed. Having long decided that he isn't a threat, she lets her gaze wander across the swaying treetops. She registers for the first time since twilight still lit her path that the forest is beautiful, as long as she isn't running for her life within it. Even without the light of the moon, the starshine illuminates the clearing enough for her to see the leaves speckled about the grass, the mushrooms growing here in there, some in silhouette in the darkness and others—silent shrooms—casting their own soft bluish glows. They remind her of Link's odd lantern—
"Hey," Link says, and she snaps her attention back to him. When she does, she takes a step back in shock, hands rising in front of her chest into a wavering defensive position, because Link is floating. On his side, in the air, sprawled out like the cold wind is the most comfortable feather-stuffed settee. The tip of his hat dangles as far down as its short length will let it, as does his shaggy blonde hair. "You're really smart, blondie."
"You've said that already," Zelda replies cautiously. Three whole times, she thinks, but doesn't say it aloud.
"You'd make a good kokiri."
"I'd make a good—what?" Zelda's eyebrows fly upwards. No one has told her she'd make a good anything before—not heir or even wife, despite her best efforts to learn, but certainly not a magical creature.
"Kokiri. Anyone can, you know."
This is news to her. "Anyone? Really?"
"Anyone," Link confirms. "If they're worthy. If the forest chooses them, and they choose the forest. Then you'll be one of us."
She takes another step back. "No, no, that can't be right. The crone said that I was too young to turn, too old to keep."
"Do you believe any old biddy you talk to?" Link mirrors his sass from earlier with a grin. "That stalfos thing is a myth, too. Most grown-ups out there just want to believe that the people their age who don't belong just go off into the forest and die, rather than having fun out here." He throws his arms wide, as if embracing all the forest. "And scare kids into thinking they have no choice but to try to fit in. You're what, fourteen?"
"Yeah," Zelda says, guardedly. "Last week."
"Same as me. Happy belated. Point is, no one is too old to keep. So you could be kokiri too. If you choose the forest, and the forest chooses you."
"You keep saying that, but I haven't chosen anything."
"Haven't you?" Link fixes her directly with eyes that almost seem to glow in the night like luminous stones. "Did you not feel the forest's call, and then choose to follow it? We all did. That's the first step."
"That's not fair! I didn't know that I was choosing something. That's not consent."
"You haven't chosen something yet," Link corrects her. "You just chose to come here. You can't choose to stay in the woods if you haven't chosen to enter them at all."
Zelda is flummoxed. It's a relief to hear that she has not yet unknowingly consigned herself to living in the woods forever, but…a choice? "How am I just supposed to choose the forest? I haven't been here six hours, and you're telling me that I should just choose to stay forever?"
"Haven't told you you should anything," Link sniffs, offended. "Just that you'd be a good kokiri." He rolls his eyes and begins to rotate midair until he's floating completely upside down, and Zelda's mouth drops open in shock. Link sticks his tongue out at her. "You're gonna catch flies like that, blondie."
Her mouth closes and she grimaces at him instead. "If I joined the kokiri…could I do that?"
"Catch flies?" Link asks teasingly, and she rolls her eyes. "Alright, alright, yeah. You get magic. Pretty big perk." He blinks slowly at her, and the effect is disorienting with him hovering upside-down like that. "Are you…interested in magic, blondie?"
His sly tone makes her grimace deeper. "Obviously you can tell I am." She takes a steadying breath. "What…else would it mean, to join you?"
"Well, you havta stay in the forest. But you can talk to people that come through, if they prove themselves. Tease 'em, too." Link raises a finger with every clause. "Magic, of course." At her curious stare, Link elaborates. "Floating, Big Jump—"
"Big jump? Is that the teleporting?" She wrinkles her nose. "Why don't you call it something more interesting than that?"
"Because we don't wanna say Farore's Wind every time, blondie. And it's our spell, so we call it Big Jump. Any more dumb questions?"
She shakes her head, nonplussed. Link narrows his eyes at her, then continues on, spinning in a slow circle in the air like the hand of a clock. She notices that he's put down at least one finger accidentally, counting up again from a fallacious two.
"Other magic stuff I'm not gonna tell you now. Resistance against weather, like a tree, kinda. You kinda change, like, with the forest. It's like being a part of something bigger." He lifts the fifth finger of his left hand and wiggles them all enthusiastically. "You meet a fairy, and they'll be by you forever, and you by them."
"A fairy?" she interrupts.
From his diagonal orientation in the air, Link points towards where his lantern sits on the forest floor. Zelda looks at it with new eyes. The blue-white light that couldn't be a natural flame…the way it pulsed and still pulses, like a heartbeat…
"There's a fairy in your lantern?!"
"Shut it!" Link hisses, freezing in place. The tip of his hat sways. "She's sleeping."
She consciously lowers her voice in spite of her instinct to shout. "I'm sorry."
Link gives the fairy in his lantern a long look, and then meets Zelda's curious gaze again. "That's Navi. My companion. They hibernate in the winter, so…I keep her safe. She gives me light."
Zelda wants to ask about how that works, given that they're only in autumn now, rather than true winter, but decides to hold her tongue. "Can I look?" she asks, tentatively.
"There's not too much to see, blondie," Link says, voice gruff. Then he exhales, a little raggedly. "You can look, just…promise not to hurt her?"
"Promise," Zelda whispers. Link nods, and recommences his spin. Yet she feels his careful eyes on her, still, as she creeps towards that familiar guiding light.
The shine on the glass and its magnifying effect is slightly disorienting, but when she peeks in, she sees how utterly unlanternlike Navi's lantern is, despite its shape. Link—or Navi herself, she isn't sure—has built a little forest home within the glass, with a layer of dirt on the bottom three inches deep, from which gently curling green ferns spring, a plush carpet of soft moss grows, and a little bed of pale downy feathers lies. The glow she had chased through the woods emits from that fluffy nest, and Zelda sees the small shape within, spherelike in the power of her own light, her wings tucked in close.
"She's lovely, Link. You must really love her a lot," Zelda says quietly.
When he replies, his voice is hoarse. "She is. And I do." Zelda nods, watching the emotions play over his face in his companion's glow.
"That's the other thing you get with the kokiri," Link finally murmurs. "Family." His voice and expression soften, and his gaze slides from her to the forest behind. He's speaking to her, but she's the last thing on his mind right now. "People who watch out for you. You watch out for them. We love each other. You know?"
Zelda knows. Or, she knows the idea. Chosen family.
If the forest chooses you, and you choose the forest.
She's never been able to choose before, just been chosen, and shaped, and told to try. And she has. She…did.
She doesn't see a reason to try anymore. Even now, the people she most cares for are those she found herself. Impa, Rusl. People who would prove themselves to the forest if they came looking for her. Who would look for her. Her father would never, ever come looking. She doesn't think she wants him to.
She wants to choose.
She's choosing.
"If I were to join the kokiri." Her voice is halting. "What would I need to do?"
Link smiles, and she realizes that this is the first true, non-mischievous smile he's ever sent her way. This one is open, welcoming. The smile of a new friend. "You go to the heart of the forest. If you and your fairy find each other, you go to the Great Deku Tree, and he'll welcome you home."
Home.
The word tingles on her lips, but she doesn't repeat it. She keeps it to herself, and feels it move down and take root as a golden ember in her heart, warming her against the forest chill. "The heart of the forest? Is that this place?"
Link wrinkles his nose at her playfully. "No, duh. This is a hollow, blondie. It's like the butthole of the forest."
"Is that why you're here?" Zelda quips.
Link throws his head back and laughs. She half expects the pointy hat to fall off his head, and then realizes what a silly thought that is, given that it hadn't fallen off when he was floating upside-down. "Good one. No, the heart of the forest…you have to find it yourself." He looks her over again, but contrary to the first time, where she felt scrutinized, his expression is warm. "I think you'll do alright, blondie."
"My name is Zelda." It's an offering in turn for everything he's given her tonight. A different future. A home.
"Good to meet you, Zelda," Link says, and picks up Navi's lantern once more. "Come back tomorrow. Hopefully I'll see you at the end of it all."
"I will." A choice. She's proud to make it.
She blinks, and Link is gone, her guiding light vanished into the indigo night as if its caster had never been there. A laugh blows on the wind, so slight that she cannot be sure that it even happened, but…
She smiles, then grins, then laughs, overcome with the freest joy she has ever breathed. The crone had been right after all when she told Zelda she was too old to keep: no longer will her father and his followers lay claim to her. She'll follow the scent of smoke on the friendly breeze until she returns to that taciturn manor. She'll pluck the thorns from her cape and wash the mud from her hair and get Impa's tender help for her hands and sneak out to the aviary in the morning to tell Rusl all about her night in the forest, and her nights to come. And tomorrow, she'll be back. If you choose the forest, and the forest chooses you.
She turns, and walks into the familiar, tree-shaded dark, leaves crunching underfoot in a veritable symphony.