His dream was the same as it usually was, with a dark form pursuing a white blur while the sky above him cried. It was so familiar that Link was genuinely surprised to see neither treetop nor yellow sky above him when he opened his eyes.
He sat up and pondered what this strange landscape was, with brilliant purples and pinks casting hues all over the bright green hills and poking out between the even bigger rises of land behind them. For a few moments he stayed completely still, utterly transfixed in the silent, serene scenery around him.
Then, there was a light birdsong from somewhere around him, like the tinkling of bells, and the spell was broken. Link remembered all about the Princess of Destiny and the Great Deku Tree, and he nervously fiddled with the little ocarina in his tunic. With a start, Link also remembered the little monsters that had come out of the ground around him the night before and he warily looked at the ground, but found nothing but the dew innocently sitting on the grass and reflecting the rising sun. The natural noise of the field had taken a crescendo to its normal busy and carefree melody, and, if he hadn't known better, Link never would have suspected anything as dangerous as an army of stalchildren was buried beneath his feet. He sighed and resigned himself to listening to the sounds of the world around him.
Finally, Link noticed that the drawbridge was down. He glanced around for Navi and found her asleep, nestled in his hat on the ground. He scooped her up and carefully put her onto his head, placing his hat over her to keep her secure and warm before hurriedly moving towards this new, strange, stone place. After all, he didn't know when night would come again and bring those monsters with it. Whatever was behind that wall was safer than anything else that might appear out here, he figured, so why not explore it a little?
He giddily walked over the bridge and onto the cobblestones, marveling at how many there were. He was so transfixed on the ground beneath his feet that he wasn't paying attention to what was in front of him and collided into the tallest boy he had ever seen. Link winced as he fell flat on his rear.
"Welcome to Castle Town," the boy said. He wore a pointy helmet and breastplate that looked like it was made of the same material Link's sword was-Mido had called it "metal". He also had a long "metal" stick that looked like it was made to stab monsters in the eye. Link couldn't help but stare.
"Is there something I can help you with?" The tall boy shifted nervously under Link's blue gaze.
Link, transfixed, continued to gape with his mouth open.
"Kid?"
"Why are you so tall?" The little Kokiri drew the words out slowly and languidly, as if to accentuate them with the characteristic he was asking about.
The tall metal-boy was completely taken off-guard by the question. "Because I eat my vegetables," he stammered out.
"How many vegetables?"
"Listen kid, do you need something?"
"I need to know how many vegetables you ate," Link stated, completely serious.
"What?"
"I need to know how you got so tall!"
"I'm, um, sure you'll find out when you grow up," The boy said, adjusting his grip on his metal eye-skewer.
"Grow up?" Link began to laugh uncontrollably. "Kokiri don't grow up! Everybody knows that!" The guard, completely taken aback by this strange child, nodded weakly as Link walked away with a smile still on his face.
Link couldn't help but ogle at all the strange buildings he saw and give shy waves to all the people he saw dressed in colorful, exotic clothing. He saw other metal people, too, and gave them more enthusiastic greetings. How could all these people dressed in such funny suits possibly be too shy to return his gestures? In his mind, there wasn't any risk of these people rejecting him because he was different (he thought he was the most normal person in the town), so he didn't hold back any of his wonderings or whims. He felt confident, and decided that confidence was something he liked.
When he spotted a magical rock that could spurt water, however, Link's train of thought was completely derailed and he rushed over to the stone wall and stuck his face over the side. He made some impressed coos and examined the rock in an effort to discover what was making the water move through it.
"What's wrong?" said a little girl's voice.
"Nothing," said the enraptured Kokiri. He didn't take his eyes off the enchanted stone. "It's magic."
"Oh, the fountain?"
He stuck his hands in the cool, clear liquid. "Is that what it's called?" Link turned his head to his informant.
"Yeah." She was a friendly-faced redheaded girl with a little yellow scarf tied around her throat. "Daddy says it's older than I am."
"Daddy?" This word was completely foreign to Link.
The little girl rocked on her toes and fixed him with her own stare.
"Hey, your clothes are different," she said. "I've never seen you before. You aren't from around here." Her tone was unintentionally rude, but Link didn't notice.
"I'm from the forest. I've got a fairy to prove it!" He proudly made a move for his hat so he could reveal Navi, but then thought better of it as he remembered that she was still sleeping.
"Oh," she said, her eyes getting wider. "You're a fairy boy?" When Link nodded, her eyes started to sparkle and she clapped her hands together.
"My name's Malon! My daddy owns Lon Lon Ranch!" she grinned. "I'm so happy to meet a fairy boy!"
Most of the concepts she threw out went completely over Link's capped head. He wanted to ask her what a "daddy" and a "ranch" and a "Lon Lon" were, but he suddenly remembered his real purpose in coming to Hyrule.
"What's a 'Princess of Destiny'?" he blundered.
Malon looked confused. "I don't know. But the castle has a princess. My daddy went there a while ago to deliver some milk, but he hasn't come back yet." She rocked back and forth on her toes. "Maybe if you find him he can tell you."
He was about to ask her what a castle looked like when a mad torrent of feathers zipped by his feet and a frantic girl, even smaller than he or Malon, shoved through them. As was the effect of the miracle rock before it, Link was immediately drawn to this new phenomenon and started chasing after the white feathered thing. He easily bypassed the other, tinier pursuer and dove into the plumage of the squawking animal.
The creature was obviously a bird, but not any kind of bird Link had ever seen before. It was much too big to be a dove, too ugly, and had these strange red dangling pieces hanging off of its beak and head. With an unpleasant crow, the bird moved its captured leg in frustration and managed to give its handler a few optimistically ignored scratches.
The miniature girl and Malon caught up to the child in green as he gawked at his prize.
"Hey! Why'd you catch my cucco? I was having fun chasing it!" Two itty bitty boots began to stomp on the uneven cobblestones. "Let it go!"
Link felt sheepish around this new child's commanding attitude. He had never seen anybody so little be so loud before and wondered if the girl's voice had grown like the tall boy in the metal suit's body, as if in some kind of trade-off. He wanted to ask her if she had gotten to choose which grew, body or sound, but the girl reminded him so much of Mido that he decided not to. Unceremoniously, he dropped the white bird on the ground and it scurried away in a flurry of feathers.
The tiny child's white and yellow dress hurried after it, but quickly came to a halt in front of a curtain of brightly-dressed tall people. The creature scuttled through, but the little girl wasn't so lucky. A few of the members of the crowd yelled angrily at her and shooed her off. When she persisted, a few of them gave her just enough attention to shout some very not-nice words (most of which were unknown to young Link) at her before giving her a shove in the opposite direction. The other two children watched as their littlest peer proceeded to use her big voice in reply to the big people.
As the enormous wails filled the cobblestone square, Malon expressed her sympathy with a little coo and rushed forward to comfort the tiny girl. Link just clamped his hands over his ears.
Eventually, the teeny one calmed down enough to allow herself to be guided over to the fountain where Link was still standing.
Malon was fixing her companion's white headscarf, which had loosened in all the excitement. "There, there," she said, "It'll all be okay. You can chase the cucco later."
The little girl's miniature features scrunched up even smaller, defying all things Link thought possible. "It's all his fault that I can't chase it now!" A stubby, pointed digit accompanied her proclamation.
Her tone was incredibly accusatory, and the non-confrontational Link felt his earlier ebullience subsiding into shyness, even as Malon tried to make the little one stop shouting. As Link cast a nervous glance around the square, he noticed how many people were staring at him.
"I'm going to find a castle," he muttered, and scurried off in a manner that greatly resembled the ugly white bird's.
Of course, a man with a mass of fur dangling off of his chin was not the destination Link had in mind, but it was what he ran into.
"Whoa! Don't damage my beard, son!" The hairy man said, steadying the boy in green. "This is my pride and joy, you know!" He cracked a smile that was barely visible behind his thick brown facial hair.
Numbly, Link nodded and headed towards the closest door he saw. The man seemed nice, but Link was not feeling up to the challenge of staying out in the open with miniature Mido's eyes burning holes into his back.
He did not expect the inquisitive, purple orbs that found him on the other side of the doorway, nor the sharp brown ones that followed after. In fact, the whole experience had become an unexpected whirl of colors, sounds, sights, smells, and eyes, eyes, eyes peering down and around at him, crushing him like the glare of condescending giants. Really, it was all the teensy-tiny girls' fault; she hadn't pointed Link out to the crowd, but had inadvertently pointed the crowd out to him.
He trembled a few moments under the weight of the big people's gazes, particularly the weird, violet-eyed, rock-bodied creature's.
"Hello," it sighed. "Are you here to buy some of the Goron's special crop?"
What an odd voice! It spilled from somewhere deep in the rock creature's body and splashed against the insides of its cavernous belly before finally evaporating out of its mouth in a thick gas that came in through the ears rather than the nose. It billowed and swirled about in the child's head, and Link could see himself surrounded by heat waves that warped the craggy mountain earth as if the very world around him were trembling.
The vision subsided as rapidly as it came, and the giant behind the counter (was Link at Ahzull's house?) shooed him away. "You're too young for bombs or big metal shields," he said, and Link nodded as if he understood and scampered off.
The bustling activity outside persisted, even as the terrified Link muddled through it in a pitiful search for a place free from accusations, peering eyes, and all the noise.
He ran through the back alleys until he finally found a place that was suitably quiet. Perhaps it was too quiet, as Navi chose the moment of silence to interject her own opinion.
"Hey! Link! You shouldn't have run into town without asking me first!" She shot out from under his cap. "That was really dangerous! What if something had happened to you and I wasn't able to warn you about it?"
Link sniffled and Navi noticed that he was close to tears. She softened. "Hey, now, listen. It's all okay now. You just calm down, and then we'll go back into town and ask where the castle is and find the princess." Link didn't look any more cheered. "The princess will help us, and everything won't be so scary."
"Come on, Link, please don't cry," she tried.
He kept staring into the reflection pool, like he could see past the giant stone building that lay on its placid surface. At first, Navi bombarded him with soothing ideas and questions, but she finally regressed into simply sitting by him and letting him compose himself like the water in the pool.
"That building is pretty," he eventually said, and he was right- it was an enormous sanctuary, with grandiose carvings lining its walls and towers, and a stout posture that could endure even the ravages of time. It kept a silent vigil, and Navi began to feel intimidated by its stoic aura.
"Do you want to go in?"
"No."
"Oh." Somewhere inside, she felt relieved. " Do you want to go back into the town?"
Wordlessly, silently, he got up and started in the direction of the town. Navi climbed into his hat and shivered.
So it's been awhile, huh?
Yeah, well, life's life, and I DID warn ya that this would be updated sporadically.
I didn't second-read this chapter heavily, so please point out any terrible nasty things that suck in this chapter, wouldya?
