It seems as though I might continue this little scheme. It's rather similar to an idea I had for another little writing project, now... Same day, several different POVs... or maybe just three, if I can't think of anything interesting to do with other Kokiri...
If I don't, then I might continue onto Part two... the depressing part.
Kokiri Days, Part One, Saria's Day
The sun poured out its rays like sweet molasses, seeping slowly but eagerly through the canopy so that clean, pink-tinted morning sunlight could caress a tunic of forest green, among other things. The tunic, however, was much more fortunate, having been graced with the privilege of caressing something more valuable- a Kokiri named Saria. As a child of the forest, she appreciated this beauty (a mutual action), stretching as her eyes traced along the shafts of lazy light which filtered through the canopy and glimmered upon the tools of the two unfortunate, slave-laboring Kokiri doing her yard work.
Or, at least, it shimmered upon the tools of the Kokiri Know-It-All Brothers as they held them menacingly and argued about how the job should be done. The two Kokiri, who had been working until they were deprived of their tools, stood by awkwardly, watching the three brothers fight.
Oh, not this again.
"Mido made you do this, didn't he? Again." asked Saria, interrupting the eldest brother as he yelled something threatening about 'Z-Targeting', whatever that was.
Hidden, somewhere in the folds of her sweet, friendly voice, there was danger, and hidden danger is more dangerous than the unhidden kind. All five of the Kokiri immediately stopped whatever they were doing, whether it was arguing or just standing there, and paid full attention to her, even though she was only talking to the ones who would have been working, had it not been for the Know-It-All Brothers.
The pair stood awkwardly at attention to her and muttered their responses incomprehensibly, which seemed to happen too much to Saria. That's why she liked Link. He skipped past the awkward muttering and just stared you down.
She didn't need to understand their words to understand their meaning, however. They meant "Yes, but if we say something, we'll 'disappoint' our chief, and you know what that means. Oh wait, you don't. You 'disappoint' him on a regular basis."
Sria nodded through their unintelligible replies with patience, and waved them off. "Oh, it's all right. Off you go..."
After they had left, she turned toward the Know-It-Alls, who kept uncharacteristically quiet. Ever since a certain incident with an ocarina, they had learned to keep their thoughts to themselves around Saria. "Now what were you doing here just now?
The Brothers glanced sidelong at each other and shuffled their feet until they heard someone call, "Oh, g'morning!"
Saria and the Brothers turned to see the waving shopkeeper.
Saved by the bell...
"Oi! Saria, do you mind if I borrowed your friends for a bit? I need some help around the shop!"
Or maybe not.
Saria thought about it for only a second; as friendly and nice and loving as she was, she, like everyone else, had a certain inclination to polite (or not-so-polite) disapproval of the Know-It-Alls. On the first day she bought her ocarina, hey had blathered on unendingly to Saria as to how to play it. Their advice was dead wrong, too. The entire time, they babbled about pressing the C buttons to play it. The Ocarina only had one C note, and it was a hole, not a button. Idiots. Even Saria had a breaking point, and they had found it, on that day. She had only yelled at them, and still, they did not want to repeat those events. Especially the part with Mido and the tweezers.
Either way, she owed the shopkeeper a favor for selling her the Ocarina for cheap since then (it had only taken her a little time rummaging through the grass to get enough money), and giving her slave labor seemed to make them even.
"Go ahead, you can take them!" she said brightly, before waving them off. "Go on," she said to them. "Put your brilliant minds off to some use, there."
At the sight of Saria's stern expression, the Brothers stifled any retorts and dragged themselves off, knowing (as they always did) what would happen if they didn't. Disappointing Saria would mean disappointing Mido as well, and you know what that means.
Throughout the exchange, Saria was careful not to look over in Mido's direction. Even if she held a sign in calling him an ass in large, bold letters, she knew he wouldn't get it. For one thing, none of the Kokiri had ever seen a donkey before. Either way, she wouldn't be surprised if Mido somehow interpreted that as a confession of love. He'd done silly things like that before.
She could feel him watching her, too, wanting to see if she'd get angry at him. She just didn't want to deal with it, yet. She nodded amiably at the shopkeeper, who smiled back as she returned to her store with her unfortunate volunteers.
She passed the time by watching the bustle around the store with mild interest for a while before turning back to face her house. She turned to the left, which was important, because it meant Mido wouldn't come into her line of sight, and therefore wouldn't say anything stupid later that night, like "I saw you watching me today" and "You couldn't keep your eyes off of The Great Mido". Unfortunately, this also meant that she didn't see Link, who had been approaching from that direction. At least, she didn't, until he was already nose to nose with her.
"Oh! Link!" she said, disguising her surprise as a greeting. She quickly arranged her face into what a shy, innocent expression. "How... was... your day?"
She caught herself talking slowly to him again, and not (just) because she was embarrassed or awkward. Saria'd noticed that every time Link stood there, not talking, people would try to fill the silence with whatever they could think of. Whenever you couldn't think of something, you would start trying to stretch out what you could think of across a longer period of time...
"It's going to be a long one, if he doesn't hurry up and... listen!"
Link perked up at the sound, and looked intently at the fairy who had spoken. Saria looked around for the voice's owner to find Navi fluttering near her ear. The fairy whispered. "He doesn't seem to pay attention unless I talk high pitched and say things like 'Look!' and 'Listen!'..."
Saria nodded in agreement. Sometimes she thought that Link wouldn't notice if she flat out stripped for him. But knowing that just made her like him more (it seemed odd how things like that worked) and of course she wouldn't do anything like that anyway...
"When did you get a fairy, Link?" she asked, curiously.
"This morning," replied Navi, who wondered how many times she would have to repeat the answer before the day was over. "We need to get to the Deku Tree, but Mido wouldn't let us through without a sword and shield. I don't know where the hell we'll get one, though. It's not like the Kokiri would ever need to make one..."
She pronounced the name "Mido" with the same tone of voice some would apply to the word "scumbag". Saria liked this fairy. It was a fairy after her own heart. More specifically, it was a fairy after Link. "There's a sword over there..." she said after a bit of thought, pointing to the other side of the village. "Everyone knows about it... It's through a small hole you can crawl through. Be careful, there's a boulder rolling around."
Come to think of it, why did they have a sword on hand? And why was it guarded by a giant, perpetually moving boulder, of all things? The only thing a sword was useful for around the village was cutting the grass, and even then, outrunning a two-story boulder was hardly worth the effort when even a large pair of scissor would do as good of a job, or better.
She could have asked where the store's milk had come from, while she was at it, but she already knew what it really came from...
Navi looked at Link.
"Why didn't you tell me about that sword in the first place, then?!" Navi yelled.
After perhaps five seconds of awkward pausing on Navi and Saria's part, and five seconds of The Blank Link Stare, Navi sighed. "Oh yes, I forgot. Let's go..."
Link trundled off behind the fairy, leaving Saria to look at the half-moved rocks and half-cut grass around her. The parts that they had gotten to weren't much better off than the parts that were left untouched, and the rocks were now laying in a circle. She sighed, and went back inside, much to the disappointment of the rather friendly sun, to ponder the mental images of Link heroically posing with a sword and shield, untidy and sweaty from battling away all of her suitors and enemies (sometimes in the same person) but with his eyes locked fixedly into her own. The mere thought made her weak at the knees.
Congratulations on making it to the end of another chapter. Well, this one was about as long than the last one was, but it somehow feels a bit more stretched, somehow, with less to work with. Meh. Anyways, now that I've started writing about Zelda events, I've come to be more and more aware of how non-central characters seem to get NOTHING done in the course of the day, while the main characters go around saving/destroying the world/continent/city/damsel in the same amount of time. It's all rather depressing.
Anyways... It's the Know-It-All brother's day, next, maybe in a few days, or a week... or two. I have the feeling that they'll be a bit more fun to write for than Saria, and maybe more fun than Mido. Until then!
