Chapter 3: The Princess Explains Again     Chapter 5: Rana Helps Out With the Old Forest Temple

Chapter 4: Reawaken

    The black wall loomed before Link again. He padded up to it, wondering if he could jump through.
    His shadow detached from beneath him and sprang up before him, giggling mockingly.
    “Who are you?” Navi screamed, flitting back to cling to Link’s ear.
    Midna tittered at the frightened fairy. The Twilight girl was mostly transparent, but her yellow and red eyes were very apparent. “I’m Link’s ‘new friend’! And he’s being silly, because one can’t just go into the Twilight like this. You have to be let in!” She turned to Link. “Do you want to be let in? It’s a bit forceful.”
    Link nodded. Midna dissolved into bubbles and floated through the barrier, making ripples in it. A giant orange hand tore through the black curtain and seized him.
    He picked himself up from where he sprawled on the bumpy golden-brown forest floor and looked around. Navi had been able to follow him, being an insubstantial fairy.
    She looked around and came over to his head. “What is this place? I mean, what happened to the forest?”
    Midna hopped sidesaddle onto Link’s back. “It’s the Twilight, silly. Isn’t it lovely today? We’re just in time – we missed the sun.”
    “I happen to like the sun,” Navi muttered, but Link was trotting forward towards the spirit’s spring and hoped Midna didn’t hear the last part.
    “Anyway, gimme that sword and shield. I want to see them,” the Twilight girl demanded, shifting herself astride her mount. Navi produced them.
    Somehow, Midna ended up with the shield over her face. Link ducked his head as she swung his sword blindly. “What kind of weapon is this? I’m not kidding you; I have no intention of becoming some sort of deformed wolf cavalry. But, seriously, how can you Hylians stand to use these things, even if you are big and strong (and clumsy)… people?”
    Link looked back at her, and tried to say something, but remembered. He looked forward, sighing, and his ears pricked.
    His sword and shield went flying, but Navi caught them.
    “Is that right?” Midna said to the wolf. “You hear the Light Spirit, don’t you? It’s mourning its lost light. Do you want to go and see?”
    He padded forward, and found the gate open. Rusl must have opened it when he had gone into the forest. The distant, sad song he had heard grew closer. The Light Spirit’s spring opened before him, and there was the faintest glimmer of light towards the back of the waterfalls.
    In front of the waterfalls patrolled three black monsters. The song cut off abruptly.
    Link growled. One had been hard enough.
    “Well, well, you can handle yourself, can’t you?” Midna floated off his back. “I’ll leave the messy stuff up to you, then!”
    “Come on!” Navi cried, racing forward. Link followed with an angry bark.
    Dancing around the slower monsters, following his fairy, he felt oddly comfortable in his new form. Perhaps it was Navi, he thought. She could reconcile him to anything.
    He took down two of the monsters, and was charging the third when it gave a terrible shriek that startled him immensely and hurt his ears. The two dead monsters rolled over and got up.
    “That’s cheating!” Navi cried, half joking, and Link spared her a grin.
    “Oh, come on!” Midna said, floating down to hover in front of him. “You mean you didn’t know? Eeee! You have to get them all at once! I guess I have to do everything myself… Like this!” She sent orange bolts shooting out at the monsters, covering the ground in shadow. They halted, as if paralyzed.
    “Well? Attack them!” she squeaked. “It only lasts a few seconds!”
    Tired as he was, Link darted forward obediently and became a living tornado of teeth and claws.
    The three creatures all slumped to the ground and burst into black fragments.
    Link glanced up. There was a blotch in the sky here, too, but it was blue.
    A faint, deep voice called from the pool. “Hero… Come to me…”
    “You have done well,” the faint voice told him. “But I still need your help. My light has been stolen, and you must recover it. I have not the strength. My light… will be in the form of blue-tinted tears. Gather them in this.”
    What was left of the light in the back of the pool squeezed together into what looked like a tiny golden grapevine.
    “One more thing… The Twilight will have attached itself to my light. Evil insects have eaten the Tears. To find the Tears, find the insects…” The voice faded away into a whisper, and the song began again, much fainter than before.

    Gathering the Tears of Light was long and arduous, climbing trees, skimming over bogs, digging dangerously glittering purple insects out of the ground, and generally doing things that he guessed normal wolves never dreamed of. There was one part he enjoyed, and that was skimming through the upper canopy between rows of corrupted Twilight Babas. It thrilled him. Naeri joined them halfway through. Working with two fairies and Midna in his form felt very odd indeed, even though he had once worked with three fairies and a demon.
    When he had killed the last insect, near dusk, and Navi put the last Tear into the golden grapevine, it quivered with power and something pulled him through white nothingness to the spirit’s pool. The grapevine dropped into the pool with a tiny splash.
    Nothing happened for a moment, and then without a sound, the black specks floating in the air blew away. The light brightened, and the clouds of Twilight broke and blew away. Midna sighed and ducked into the ground, into Link’s shadow. Colour returned to the trees and the flowers and the water.
    A ball of light like Ordona’s rose from the pool, and a great long-tailed bearded monkey appeared, curled around it protectively.
    “Greetings, Hero. I am Faron, the Light Spirit of Faron Wood. I thank you for rescuing me.”
    “We’re sorry to have started so late,” Navi said, fluttering in front of him.
    Faron shook his great head. “It is not too late. It is more dire than it should have been, but you have been spared the initial onslaught of Zant’s offensive. This is good. You have proven yourself undulled with the saving of Ordona and myself. Re-awaken, Hero.”
    Link started. He was a Hylian again. Not only a Hylian, himself again, and at the peak of his fighting strength, but he was dressed in his familiar green tunic with his sword and shield strapped to his back. He wondered briefly if Navi or the Spirit had clothed him thus for the job ahead of him, but he was happy about it nonetheless.
    The Spirit looked him in the eyes. “It is your duty to finish what you have begun. Be swift and strong, Hero. The world needs you. Your true love will wait you faithfully. Do not forget yourself again. As your ancestors before you, deliver us from darkness!”
    Link bowed. “I will. Thank you, Faron, Spirit of the Woods.”
    “Go to the Old Forest Temple. Evil still lurks there, though the sky is clear. There you will do what you need to do.”
    Faron faded away.
    Link headed back to Ordon. The sun was setting.

    A happy squeal came shrilling out of the forest from the direction of the village, and then Rana flung herself into his arms. “Link! You’re back to yourself!”
    “Yes. That was a strange experience, being a wolf. How are you?”
    “I’m great! Nothing happened all day, though. How are you?”
    “Sore, tired, and confused. Same as always.” They all laughed.
    “You do look rather beat. Can saving the world wait for one night?”
    “Yes, I suppose so. Let me see… things to tell you… Zelda is all right, for now. She’s in a tower in Hyrule Castle – which is… pretty impressive. She did a good job in three years.”
    “I’ll say! I lived in the castle, sort of, until she sent me away before the attack.”
    “She said something like that. I’m glad you’re safe.”
    “I didn’t want to, but-“ Link kissed her.

     “So, explain why everything is all different. Where’s Kokiri Forest? Why is it called Faron Woods now?” Link demanded when they parted.
     “Oh, well, Zelda was using the Triforce of Wisdom to heal the land, and I think she summoned the Goddesses… accidentally.”
     “What? Really?” Navi asked, laughing at Rana’s expression. They began walking towards Ordon.
     “Yeah. And they did some stuff. Zelda told them some things that she wanted, and that she knew the Gorons and Zoras and Kokiri wanted – she talked with all of them before she started to fix stuff – and the Goddesses just went and did stuff. A lot of it was their own thing, but for example, the Zoras wanted to be closer to Lake Hylia, so they got moved north so now Zora’s River doesn’t cross across the Gorons’ roads. But, there’s still a river flowing through there, through the forest, too. It’s called Kakariko River now. I’m not sure why. And the Gorons started mining, like, not just to get the tastiest rocks, but that’s not anything to do with the change of the land. Um… the Kokiri wanted to be a little further away from the edge of the forest now that Ordon was starting up,and so there’s a mountain deep in the forest where the Great Deku Tree isnow, but the Kokiri live all around inside Kokiri Forest, which is behind the Lost Woods, which is over to the west, there…” Rana paused for breath.
     “And the Skull Kids have mostly joined them,” Naeri continued. “There are a couple that don’t live in the village, but all around the forest. And there weren’t any monsters until Zant showed up.”
     “I see.” Though he didn’t quite. Rana chattered so fast it was sometimeshard to make any sense of what she said at all.
     “Wait, what’s that?” Naeri asked, stopping and hovering suddenly, lookingback, deeper into the forest.
     Link’s ears twitched. “Fighting?”
     Rana breezed past him impetuously. “Well, let’s go see!”
     In a clearing, they saw someone holding off three Bokoblins at once. He was weakening, though he fought with skill.
     “Rusl!” Link shouted, plunging forward. Rana brought her sword down on one Bokoblin’s head; Link sliced the other two in half with two quick strokes. Rusl, breathing heavily and bleeding from a head wound, straightened up and wiped his forehead.
     “Thank you… Green?”
     Link ducked his head, embarrassed, even as he steadied Rusl from falling.“Well, now, that’s a story… I’m sorry, Rusl. I’m Link. I was running away from something… but fortunately it found me and corrected my view of things.”
     Rusl looked back and forth between the two Hylians. “I think I can see where you’re going with this. Well, I owe you my life. I found no trace of the children, though…”
     “Oh, no,” Rana said. “And it’s really dark now. Well, we’ll get you home, and then you can rest, and then tomorrow early we’ll go look again.”
     “How early?” Rusl asked.
     Rana laughed and shook her head. “You need rest! You can catch up with us later, or we’ll come back at lunchtime or something. I’ll let Naeri give you a message tomorrow.”
     They came to Rusl’s house, and Uli was startled to see her husband wounded, but thanked Link and Rana. Then she had to be told the story of Link’s grief-stricken past, though it was confused coming as it was from two Hylians and two fairies at once, and the circumstances that called him back to the path of Hero now. Rusl was very concerned about the state of Hyrule Castle, while Uli fussed over his head. “I knew things were not right for a few days, about the time that the Princess says the castle fell, but I didn’t know it was this bad so soon.”
     “Yes,” Link said. “I need to move fast now. I don’t think my tardiness ten– three years ago helped at all.”

     They left Rusl.
     When they had arrived at the door of his house, Link turned to Rana. “Would you like to have supper with me?”
     “I’d love that. Too bad Saria can’t come, but it’s a bit far and late for that. What are you having?”
     They ate, and talked, and Rana laughed merrily, and soon Link found himself laughing with her. Outside, he knew there was danger and evil shadows, but inside, for one evening, he knew that at least one thing had gone right.
     At last, though Rana had hardly finished talking, she got up.“I’m sorry, Link! You’re completely beat, and here I am keeping you up…You’ll need lots of sleep if you want to go and look at the Old Forest Temple tomorrow. There are monkeys there, you know! Even if evil is there– and don’t panic, I’m not going to check it out tonight – you’ll need your rest to get around in there. I’ll show you where tomorrow.”
     “Good night,” Link said. “Come early tomorrow!”
     “I will!” she answered, and skipped off into the darkness, her fairy hovering around her ear, to go to her home in the Kokiri Forest. Link couldn’t help but worry, but he let her go.

     That night, dreams still assailed him. Navi put damp cloths on his brow while he tossed and thrashed. When he woke, it occurred to him that the only time he had slept fearlessly in the last few years was two nights before, when he had fainted in the Twilight of Faron Woods.
     There was a knock on his door almost as soon as he remembered that. Dragging himself reluctantly out of bed and down the ladders, he opened the door.
     Rana stood there, bright and cheerful.
     “Well? When do we start?”
Link smiled.

Chapter 3: The Princess Explains Again     Chapter 5: Rana Helps Out With the Old Forest Temple