1LOST
Game: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Style: Friendship/Spiritual
Characters: Saria, silent!Link
Synopsis:The Lost Woods accept the Kokiri, the eternal forest children. However, for those who do not belong in the Wood, such as the boy without a fairy... there is only a song for salvation. The friendship of Saria and Link.
Origin
Kokiri do not question how they came to be. It is the way the world always is, will be and once was –thus is the quote of the Know-It-All Brothers, but as they too talk of C-buttons and menu-screens nonsense, no one tries to understand anyway. Wandering the Woods by the light of their fairies instead entertains the race of eternal children separated from the world far through their forest, the land unseen by any Kokiri that does not want to die.
To die is also not questioned by the Kokiri, as leaves fall and fade to feed the rise of new trees to strengthen the whole. That is why the children of the Woods are wiling to also be warriors, with weapons of rock and bark shields, protected by the forest for which they in turn stand guard. It is a game: violent mutated plants tie their own vines in knots trying to chase Kokiri, and the children catch deku nuts shot by angered bushes, to sell to stun each other in pranks and play.
Digressing into games is how the children answer the idea of death. …Sometimes a Kokiri does not come back from the Woods, and their name is no longer spoken. But mostly in life, death belongs to the world beyond trying to claim the forest. Sometimes monsters that look like Kokiri, only stretched to unnatural heights, enter through the village portal and go to the Lost Woods too. They do not look like Kokiri for long, as the forest reveals the bone monsters hidden by their faces.
Kokiri do not question it. They're having too much fun.
Yet one boy questions how he came to be, leading him to meet the girl who holds the best qualities of childhood and the Woods while she questions their eternity. The Kokiri do not know the suffering they cause to that boy tormented by their self-claimed leader, or to that girl who believes in the children's potential for purity. The Kokiri do not ask when Link and Mido depart into the Lost Woods together, for only Mido to return, leaving alone the boy without a fairy to guide him home. However: Saria questions it.
Torn by strikes of stealth from the increasing shadows, the boy is regardless oblivious to the branches slicing his clothes and skin as he progresses further within the Woods. To swing on an above branch to avoid a pitfall, to sway with the brambles so to weave past their thorns, and to flow through the grass as if energized by the air and plant energy: those are tricks of the forest children –failed by the boy clothed as a Kokiri. The earth pitfalls stain his skin with shadows, thorns puncture his form and grass takes root in his clothes to clad him anew.
The darkness intensifies. Does the boy question it?
Saria stops his mindless motion by taking his hand, a grip forcing him to halt in place. When he spirals to her, she wonders if the boy sights an incarnation of the Wood holding him. The sky is in two orbs peeking through emerald foliage that frames those irises. Saria imagines this poetry to be his thoughts, afraid of that end for the boy who would ask to hear her song as a last source of joy. The Lost Wood boys always ask to hear the story of her song…
Except, instead there is silence. The boy only glowers to the Kokiri before looking away, eyes still narrowed and his jaw taut. With his sight to that side, Saria carefully edges closer and points forward –to the chasm to which he would have fallen without her grasp. The eyes widen, but the frown stubbornly stays, especially as Saria laughs softly for that face.
Releasing his hand before he tugs away and loses his balance, Saria slowly steps backwards into the Woods, waving her hand to indicate the boy to follow her. Hesitating, the boy takes a step back. Saria shivers with the leaves of the trees that witness with the Kokiri a vision of that fall. Silence still reigns as she stares to the boy and his frown, wondering if those eyes of sharply sparkling clarity will see through the shadows. Except, in his eternal silence, what will end the whispering of the Woods asking if the boy will stay to play?
Without words, the boy will be lost.
Thus: "Help me?" Saria questions the boy without a fairy. She will be his voice, his guide in the Wood, "Will you help me get home?" If he will play this game… Saria will be the boy's fairy. The boy is taken aback –another step back, closer to the edge– until: slowly, with those bright eyes intent upon her, there is a nod. The boy follows Saria into the forest.
Crossing through the foliage and growth, Saria does not let the boy fall behind as, sadly, had Mido. Instead, she shows to him where to place his hands on above branches, where to step to escape thorns and tries to play chase for him to feel the rush of the breeze and grass blades. Saria tries to see if the boy will smile.
Coming to a clearing, she calls if they can rest. A shrug is the answer as he stops. Saria steps forward to the center of the space to breathe in the quiet. With other Kokiri, Saria would not hear the dancing foliage, or the chirp of crimson fluttering above. That sound inspires the game of 'choose your name', "Robin?" Saria turns to see if he will smile for that choice.
The boy, lying upon the earth in the meadow, stirs to shake his head. Still sullen, lost in thoughts Saria can't see, the boy rips blades of grass from their homeland. That eco evisceration has consequences: the grass strikes back with the eruption of the earth beneath the boy. Wide-eyed, the shocked life grasps wildly to the quaking world, as he is jolted, juddered, shuddered, shaken. Mind bouncing and his body vibrating in a blur, he is carried in fast circles around the enclosure.
Saria falls to the ground, too weakened to stand –for the laughter singing from the eternal child, as the disgruntled deku scrub finally dislodges the boy from its back. With clothes and skin stained by grass that is not the scrub's hair this time, he shares a glare identical to that of the deku.
The plant has the final revenge, with the boy thrown back by the crack of a deku nut spat at close-range to his forehead. The deku scrub, pleased with its success, has a victory dance of leaves ripping and squeaks every step, before returning to its spot to sleep. Silence descends anew to the forest.
Saria, now in control of her giggles, picks a leaf from the boy's strikes of blonde hair as he recovers from spirals of dizziness. She has a new name suggestion, "Deku?" Apparently ignoring her, he only moves to reclaim his Kokiri hat lost during his jostling. Distracted, the boy does not hear the stranger.
It taints all it touches, the grass turning to ash with the earth desiccating in the wake of its determined, single-minded, unyielding tread. A distant part of Saria's mind supposes the boy believes she is only offering another name for him with her next word, hushed by horror, "…Stalfos…"
The boy thus only gives a scowl, which intensifies as Saria throws him and herself to the ground –but to escape the swing of a sword. The skeletal soldier stands above the collapsed Kokiri, as the blade raised once more reflects the stare of the boy at last aware of the oncoming end.
A call of an unknown voice heralds a snap alike to breaking bones, as blindness erupts for Saria for a flood of light. The shadows of the flash fade from her sight to reveal the severed shield of the deku nut in front of the skeleton stunned by the boy.
The boy's call, a burst of wordless sound, echoed through the world's Wood for the trees to tremble before the Kokiri. A low branch is torn from one such tree, the splitting bark gasping as Saria does in realizing the boy… the boy is going to battle the Stalfos with a stick.
The strike is cut short, however, as he hesitates before discarding the weapon in a change of tactics. For the most part, it involves the wise choice of running away, with his hand taking hold of Saria's so she flees at his side. However, letting the boy lead the way was a mistake, understood as silver gates rise to cage the Kokiri. They are locked in the territory of two circling wolfos.
Excitement incites slathers of drool to slither from the monsters' hanging maws. The wolfos wait for their prey to try –to fail– to run. Saria cannot comprehend this stream of monsters. The forest is her ally, the wind through the leaves is her breath, the chlorophyll energy is in her blood… and the fallen twigs torn from their protectors in the Wood are her body, to be broken beneath the clawed trek of the wolfos.
A grasp to her shoulder drags her attention to the boy: the look of desperation clear in those wide eyes. Saria tries to smile to calm his fear, even as she has the mental mantra that she is so sorry she can't save– Except, the desperation is revealed to be frustration, his jawline tensing. The boy's frown was the first and is likely to be the last look Saria would see from the boy without a fairy. The boy cries out again, as against the stalfos, without words. ...He wants to give Saria his first and final words.
Not his final: staring between Saria and their oncoming destroyers, the boy gestures to the wolfos for her, before colliding his hands. Only, Saria doesn't understand, even as the clap of his hands reminds her of the deku nut's snap, so she thinks the boy has a new strategy… and he needs her.
The silent boy needs a life to understand him before that isolated existence ends.
The wolfos rise on their haunches, eyes intent to their targets, and a howl pierces into reality. However, the howl is not of the wolfos, who stop to whine in shock for hearing their prey cry without the touch of their talons. The boy is howling in mimic of the monsters, staring in unknown significance to Saria.
There is that frown again, and a pause for thought –before he flicks her arm. "Ow!" The exclamation is quiet compared to his continuing howl, but still makes the boy nod knowingly, as if all issues are solved. Hesitant, curious, Saria holds the note of her 'ow' until their voices ululate in synchronization. The boy takes Saria's hand, colliding his hold to her fingertips, and with their stares connected... she understands.
The boy's plan is insane. Regardless, the harmony of their howls has become meaningless to their enemies. The wolfos are weary of waiting. The dual leaps, with the wolfos dividing their target prey, unleash force and ferocity to tear and break and bleed lives for liberation from starvation.
The wolfos claimed a child each –only by the wish of the Kokiri. Thrown stones, high-pitched whistles and taunts for attention divided the monsters' incentives. The wolfos' dives towards their targets had those individuals align back-to-back: a final closeness before this end. As the wolfos gouged the air within their leaps, the children were parted, their support for each other lost, and the snarls of the monsters become frenzied against the screamed silence of the Lost Woods.
The wolfos were fooled by the Kokiri, with the attack dives dodged, so the two sets of teeth and talons would collide. Threatened by predators, the wolfos wage war upon each other, as their prey uses the distraction to escape. Sounds of fury and suffering howl from behind Saria, as she climbs up through the foliage of the vines against the wall of the silver gates. Turning back at the top to help the boy, Saria swiftly turns statuesque as she stares to the vines severed from the wall… to the space where the boy was standing, now claimed by the recovered wolfos.
The fall was foreseen, yet still Saria lurches within as she is torn from the height by a desperate hold. Landing in the leaves, the Kokiri meets the sight of the sky edged by gold: the boy saved Saria. He stands to the side to give Saria space to rise, as she uses the support of the wall that finally separates the Kokiri from the wolfos. At last, they are safe.
Saria tells it as if a jest that she has to lead the path, and so they evade the Stalfos clearing to return to the Kokiri. However, the boy ceases his steps, halting her. Following his sight line, Saria recognizes the bridge above their heads to travel from the outer world into the Kokiri village. It is the home of endless childhood, eternal remembrance of rejection for seeking understanding.
The boy without a fairy stands between the Wood and the world, not yet to reach that bridge. However: 'Not yet?' Saria wonders for her thoughts, her questions for the transience of eternity. …It is not yet reality for the Woods lost in illusion –but the boy will stand on the bridge between... the boy who at last shows a smile to Saria in this clearing betwixt time: the boy she now knows to name, "Link."
Links to inconceivable individuals and experiences exist across locations that Kokiri cannot know. Yet, the connections are known by the Woods. The Woods witness, wither away and awaken anew with the world beyond their boundaries. Insight sharpening her focus, Saria sees the boy is looking to beyond the bridge: against the night shimmers the crystalline web of constellations cast by the skulltula of the sky. The stars are distant at times of darkness, and are fated to fade from Saria's sight in time. Regardless, the greatest quality of the eternal Woods is to remember always… their bond.
When his wary eyes return to Saria, finally in that frown there is not confusion, but comprehension. Link nods as if knowingly to that name, called first by an immortal, to be spoken, wished for, dreaded and questioned by individuals in the diverse ecology tied to, yet ever separate from the forest, Saria's home. The boy holds out his hand to Saria, for his 'fairy' to lead him to return. However, even as the immortal smiles to her friend, it is known he is truly leading her.
Link is the answer to their questions.
This piece was not intended, but inspiration kept returning until completed. Child silent!Link intrigues me for writing, thus this is my attempt to communicate his personality of stubbornness/determination by expressions, wordless sound and actions, from Saria's perspective.
The greatest potential point of confusion is the howling to express his plan to Saria, so I will clarify. Two Kokiri howling and their hands colliding = two howling wolfos are to be dodged by the Kokiri so the monsters collide in their leaps.
Regardless of that concern, I hope you enjoyed the fic. As for me, I realized there does not need to be a slight-hinted-unrequited pairing of Saria for Link, for the characters to have a deep connection. This fic is for the concept of friendship.