2: Home

He was finally home, but he knew he couldn't stay long.

The soft lilt of a lullaby still swept the fringe of his mind, and as he stared at his estranged bed, the boy wondered how he ever used to manage sleeping so late. His younger days were filled with things he'd left behind here—oversleeping, loneliness, bullying and the odd, careless dream.

Younger days… and yet, seven years on, he was the same age as then. It was a strange notion to wrap ones mind around, this business of time travel, but in these small moments of coincidence he found his mind wander the thin lines of fantasy.

It was the closest to a real Kokiri Link would ever feel.

With the ghost of a smile, he turned a crystal blue gaze to the rest of the small abode he'd once called home. The light of day, filtered by the forest canopy and holding the taste of oak on its scent, came spilling through the small square window above his childish bunk with a soft tone to illuminate the room. Mahogany grain coursed through every surface, the hard wood stump in the center of his house providing a humble table at which he would often eat—an empty clay bowl sat there still, stained aubergine and incarnadine from the berries it often held.

Tacked to the wall were dog-eared notes he'd made, scrawled with a hardly legible though uncomplicated lettering. Most documented achievements of some sort, penned with excitement and pride, though each seemed so very inconsequential now.

I lifted up a rock twice the size of what Remi did today, and now he's spent the whole afternoon out the front of Mido's place, trying to do better—underneath these words was a vague scribble of the event, once a masterpiece to the boy but now, only resembling the poorly formed stick figures dabbed with green they truly were.

Link paused, squinting closer, and a nostalgic laughter bubbled up from his chest. It was a tiny squeak of a sound, so used to the deeper boom of a man's rumble he was, and it almost made his throat feel tight to produce. Blonde bangs wisped about his brow as the boy shook his head, turning from the sight with lighter footfalls than he was accustomed, heading toward the door.

Standing upon the small balcony, so unstable and poorly designed the moss covered plateau was, he marveled at how it had never once collapsed. The air was still, tranquil, and he allowed his gaze to sweep the entirety of this timeless domain, as unchanging as the children it housed. Not even a single leaf seemed out of place; Saria's house still bore the hand painted lines, the orange pigment as fresh as the day he had helped her lay them, signed by their handprints.

Link's brow furrowed a moment as his fingers twitched by his side, and slowly, he found his small hand rise to be inspected. His palm was soft and his calluses were gone, erased by the sweet lullaby. As his tiny digits flexed wide, he studied them in silence; his fingers were chubby, short and weak with a youthful grip. He knew well it would grow into the hand of a man again one day, able to wield a sword with strength and dexterity, climb mountain rocks and handle dangerous explosives. So different a pair of hands were they, and yet, one and the same.

He wondered idly if this hand would fit the shape he'd left upon the wood of Saria's home, though for all his courage, he could not bring himself to find out.

A slow sigh passed his lips, blue eyes returning unfocused to the house of his dear childhood friend. She was inside, he knew, just the same as he had known her then and this time, never to become anything more. Saria would never once think he may rise before her, and soon she would come, padding softly from her doorway to wake him as she always did, a chipper smile on her face as called to him from the bottom of his ladder.

Link knew he could not risk lingering any longer.

Within the hour, the girl emerged, the verdant green of her hair bobbing with each step as she took to her daily ritual. Just as Link had known she would, she stood at the foot of his tree-forged house, a fond smile sent to the carving the boy had made in one of its roots, and called to him with a happy charm. She waited for him to stir, a thought spared to how lazy the boy could be, and lifted her voice to try again as her fairy flew overhead.

Soft soles climbed his ladder, and the chipper smile had already begun to fade. Not even the briefest glance was given to the room around her, missing the precious details the boy had been so careful to capture; she saw only the empty bed, cold and strangely, neatly made.

Her hand was unsteady when her fingers brushed the note upon his sheets, penned far neater than she'd seen before, yet undoubtedly his. She'd barely had the time to read it before the tears pricked her vision, blurring the words, though she knew they were inevitable.

"Saria, I'm leaving. But that's okay, because we'll be friends forever. Won't we?"

And as she read the words she'd spoken herself when they'd parted in another life, Link paused upon the bridge where he'd heard them, the whisper of it breezing his mind. He turned to look back, a last glimpse over his shoulder, but before he could his feet were moving again, urging him ever onward as he stepped out alone.

There were some things the boy just couldn't bear to relive.