Your first test, of many, save him, the father of the forest…in vain. Lesson one: courage, resolve, understanding. Understand that you cannot save everyone, though you may, will, try. The tree will die, you will be blamed, and no one will know of the spider that grew sticky, creamy webs on his insides. The monster you risked your life to slay with cunning and skill, the monster with the big eye that turned gruesome green and raging red, burning up in its sky blue fury when you delivered the final blow. All in vain. But the all knowing tree won’t tell you that just yet. He will make you wait, make you believe all is well, build your spirits up, only to break them, but not yet. And this is where you feel regret because you are a blank slate and the world doesn’t make sense just yet, so you’ll need to start feeling again from scratch because new heroes need experience in success and disappointment to keep you grounded in the reality of life. A true lesson in failure and moving on, a budding hero with a foundation of courage, a goal and direction, and there’s a man from the desert with a dark heart that yearns for power, and there’s a princess in the works, added to the equation, and you begin to daydream about whether her hair will be brown or golden, will her eyes be blue, what she’ll sound like, but for now you will say goodbye to the only home you’ve known in this life, a home familiar from those before, and set off on another quest of epic proportions. You will venture forth, venture far, but only after you say goodbye again to the tree turned gray and stiff and still, his leaves falling like rain.
Inventory
Weapons
- Deku Nut: On the rare occasion that a forest folk is able to stun and kill a deku baba, avoiding the poisonous chomp of its razor lined mouth, and collect its deku nut fruit from the center, one may indulge in the childish fantasy of being a shadow warrior, of life beyond the trees, though the likelihood of ever meeting such a person is next to nothing. Use as a means of stunning your enemy and sneak away, though that might be seen as cowardly, so perhaps stun and destroy instead.
- Fairy Slingshot: This is not a child’s plaything. It is a weapon of skillful handling and precise calculations. Angles, pull force, timing, it’s all connected into one moment where all of the perfect moments come together to deliver that final blow. Use with caution and do not use against friends as serious injury might result from such tomfoolery.
Special Items
- Spiritual Stone of the Forest: It’s green is the same as your tunic, the same as the green of the forest you have called home and the tree tells you to keep it safe for it will play an important part to come on your journey. Spirituality has never really been your thing, but you can sense a power inside the sheen, an essence you don’t quite understand despite the legend already told to you, but you start to wonder if there will always be parts of us left behind in everything we create. Perhaps that which gave life to everything left behind a part of power and this is the physical form of that power, of the gift given to all. Keep it safe he says, but what else would you do with it?
This is not forever. Just for now. Your best friend, the girl with the green eyes that see right through you will say goodbye to you, the boy no longer without a fairy on the path made for him. She will worry, she will regret. She’ll never tell you. Maybe she knew, all along, that you couldn’t stay friends in the forest, stay together forever. Your destiny was already written in the program of your being decades ago. She is not the end, but a means to an end. She resolves to always be your friend, handing you her favorite token. You resolve to never let those you love get hurt, you resolve to return, and you will see her again soon, but it won’t be forever, because nothing is. She has her destiny, you have yours, and for the moment yours is moving ahead of you, and hers will come to her when it is time. You accept the gift, play a note or two to humor her, then turn your back on her, on your past, on your home. And walk away. She’ll never tell you how much that hurt.
Inventory
Special Items
- Fairy Ocarina: She gave you a piece of herself, her favorite Ocarina in the hopes it would bring you back home to the green forest in your green tunic because home is where the heart is and home is where one can feel the safest and she wants you to come back because then she would know you were safe, but she understands that you cannot stay forever and that your future lies beyond the limits of the trees and a part of her wants to come with you, to be just as brave and leave her home, just to see what it’s like, but there’s something else in her, something deep and unknown that keeps her there, as though bound by duty. So instead she gives you this piece of herself in the hopes that you will come back with enough stories to tell that it will take you many days to tell them all.
Overall objective: kill the monsters, save the world. Current objective: Meet the Princess. You don’t know where you’re going. Not right away. You need to explore. New grounds, new places, new faces, and it’s all a little overwhelming, and you feel a little lost, but it’s okay. It’s all the same when you think about it. You just came from the forest, and there is always a forest or a swamp, a place surrounded by trees. There is going to be a lake somewhere, a giant mountain, filled with fire or covered in snow. There will be a village or two and the castle, where it will all end. There are water people, rock people, regular people. They’re all the same, it’s all the same, you can always return to where you started from, try a new place, meet the new people, but know it’s all still just the same. Oh! And don’t forget the map in case you get lost and forget where you are.
Everyone is a means to the end. A set dialogue they cannot divert from, only recite over and over again. Same items, same life, same future. Wait till sundown to get the egg from the girl with the red hair from the ranch in the field. Wait till sunup for the egg to hatch so you can wake her father who has a nasty habit of napping on the job. Sneak into the castle through the hole in the wall, sneak past the guards, hide in the shadows, hug the wall, talk to the Princess. You will look into her eyes, her blue eyes, the same blue as yours and it will be love at first sight, and you will risk your life for her for the rest of time. She sets the quest and you are determined. But slow down, your name is familiar to her, as if she’s heard it before, knows it. Maybe she has and she doesn’t remember. And as she wonders, maybe, for a moment, you wonder too about whether you have fallen for her before in another life, and will fall for her later in lives to come. But you’re the man for the job, the one to help set everything right. She can’t do it, but you can. Only you. She will tell you secrets, bring your questions to clarity so you no longer question your existence in this here and now. She will add more to the legend, the reason for the dark clouds in her dark dreams of a dark man from the desert who seeks the golden triangles to rule the world. He needs the stones of forest earth, clear water, and searing fire to find them, but you have one of them and the others are still with their relative rulers, the main dilemma for now. In that minute you think you will win, you think you can thwart the dark clouds with your sword and shield, and her know how: brains and brawn. Because in the minds of youth, failure isn’t a realistic outcome.
Inventory
Special Items
- Note from Zelda: Her signature is almost priceless because no one hardly every sees her except on special occasions, but the note says that you are in charge, by her orders, of saving Hyrule and she gives you this note so that naysayers and nonbelievers will believe you because how hard it is to come by a note signed by the princess herself, but that makes you wonder if maybe she is going a little too far, maybe this whole thing is just in her head, that there really isn’t a threat to the land, that no one is in search of those golden triangles because there really isn’t any evidence, aside from the tree who said it was him, and that’s a pretty big piece of evidence, but it just feels like you against the world and even when you thought about telling her no, you don’t think you’re the right boy for the job, it still feels like you’re not given a choice and she will convince you to help her whether you want to or not.
It is late and the sun is setting and you think you’ll just lay on a soft patch of grass, surrounded by plants that never leave you in short supply of energy and ammunition. But when you steer off the given, true path, the night tries to take you for his own. Send his minions of darkness, skeletal children who do his bidding, try to take back the life they’ve lost. They are the lost children of the war you were too young to remember, the war you escaped, but you don’t know this. You see them and they frighten you, taunt you. They just want to play, but their eyes are hungry for your soul. You will fight them off all night, every night when you are not safe in a home, in a town, in a temple, in the lake, in the forest, where the children do not go, cannot go. Even the night’s power has limitations as to where its shadows can reach. Stay on the true path Hero of Time. Do not allow yourself to be lead astray, and if you must stay outside, sleep with one eye open and your sword drawn.
