Somewhere up in the sky, the Goddesses had uppended a lake. The rain pounded down over all of Hyrule, turning the earth to churned mud, anything more than ten metres away a hazy blur, and a pleasant morning into something thoroughly unpleasant.
It slapped noisily against the leaves of trees and bushes, it gurgled where ever it could. There was nothing a person could wear, could do, that could keep out the rain. It found a way to trickle down the back of it and sitting there, being cold. It was the very annoying sort of rain.
This dreary scene was mostly devoid of life: all farmers and animals had left for shelter long since. Only a small, green, sorry bundle moved through the torrent, along a muddy, stone path leading to Hyrule Town.
A flying ball of evanesance followed at a distance. Occasionally it would fly ahead on its little wings to try and catch a glimpse of the figure's face, but the hood of the cloak it wore shrouded it in darkness.
"Link?" the little ball queried. "Are you mad?"
There was the sound of teeth being ground to powder.
"Linky?" it asked again in a little voice. "You're ignoring me now, aren't you? Link? I said I was sorry."
From out of the depths, a pair of eyes glared at her. They were quite beautiful in a perfect-sapphire, crystal-blue kind of way, but marred by the murderous rage that filled them.
But Navi was persistent. Well...maybe not persistent, just too stupid to know when to shut up.
"Can't we just forget this?"
"Forget this!"
The figure suddenly threw back its hood. As the swaves of damp, blonde curls settled, the girl snatched angrily at the dumb fairy before her.
"Navi, if you could die, I would kill you," the teenager growled. She pointed to herself and pulled emphatically at a strand of hair. "Look at me now. I'm a freak!"
Wrenching the hood back down, she marched away into the rain, leaving a stunned little fairy behind.
Two days earlier...
The high pitched screams of, "you killed our Deku Tree, bastard!" faded into the distance.
They'd finally lost them. As insane with rage and grief as they were, the Kikiri only ever aged to 11 years old. Link, with his extra two years and physical stamina, had managed to outrun them, saving himself and Navi from a brutal death at the pitchfork-wielding hands of a childish mob. Outrunning the hail of rocks had been harder. His back shone with a thousand bruises.
The boy Without A Fairy and his fairy settled to a brisk walk. Navi helped by talking without pause or breath, which helped take the boy's attention away from thinking about all he was leaving behind and the huge enigma that they were walking into.
"A dog runs into a forest. How far does it run for till it starts running out of the forest," Navi piped enthusiastically.
"Yes," said Link, who hadn't been paying attention.
"Wrong! He runs half way in and then he starts running out."
She stuck her tongue out at Link, though it was lost in the luminescence.
"I beated you!"
"Beat," Link corrected automatically.
Navi was only a week old, and therefore liable to make frequent mistakes with simple English. Why the Great Deku Tree (may he rest in eternal peace) had thought to create her knowing innumerable annoying brain-teasers, quotes and saying though, such as the last one, was anybody's guess.
Why he had thought to create her was also a great mystery.
That wooden jerk certainly had a lot to answer for.
Using some unknown connection between the topics, she was now talking avidly about her dislike for eating dried Caracase bird.
It was because of this constant distraction that Link nearly walked straight into the pond. Seemingly out of nowhere it had appeared, and he lurched to a halt. For a moment he balanced perfectly on the edge, arms flailing, the water glistened hungrily below him, like molten diamond, before grabbing hold of the wooden sign beaten into the ground nearby.
'Legendary cursed spring of the Kikiri (Not affiliated with the legendary cursed springs of Jusenkyo),' it read. Beware all who enter this place for, should you bath in these waters, your body shall become that of the sex most fair, and thou shalt be branded a pervert throughout these lands.'
It took a while for Link's brain to process this, mainly because he got distracted at the word 'sex'.
"Whoa!" he yelled, as realisation dawned, and he started to move away quickly. "Thank the Goddess' I didn't fall in that. My vow of becoming a Hero among Heroes would be-"
Someone very small and very annoying, who believed that it would be very funny to see her master get wet, pushed him in the back.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
SPLASH...
So the great Hero had spent his first days in the wide world as a great Heroine, and found the whole experience eye-openingly unpleasant. Thankfully he'd managed to place half a dozen layers of clothing between himself and his new skin.
"How about Latavianya?"
"For the last time, I am not changing my name," Link yelled. "And I'm not buying new clothes or wearing a dress. I'm not gonna marry somebody to settle down with kids. Nor am I gonna find this funny, laugh at it when I'm older or accept this in the slightest. OK! You get that? I won't rest until I find a cure to this."
She paused to see if this had sunk in.
"Shirley I like," Navi smiled brightly.
Link groaned. It was growing dark and she needed sleep.
An outcrop of stone rose up out of the ground nearby. She scrambled up it and finding the most comfortable niche, she slotted herself in it, and settled down for a long, wet night. There was a tarpaulin that she'd packed in his backpack, which she got out and threw over herself.
She pulled the hood further over her face, shut her eyes and tried to sleep.
This certainly wasn't helped by the fact that she hadn't gone to the toilet in two days combined with the gurgling/trickling of the rainwater.
"I think you're in denials."
"Go to sleep, Navi."
Out on the dark, wind-swept plains, a wolfos howled.
The glow dimmed from a bright, confident white to a tiny pink.
"C-c-can I sleep with you tonight?"
Mercifully, Link nodded. The tiny warmth grew closer, slipped inside her drenched cloak, and curled up on her chest.
"Linky?"
"Mmm?"
"What does 'lesbian' mean?"
"Dunno. Why?"
"Its just one of thoses words that appearing in my head. Whatever it is, I think I'm wanting one."
"Maybe it's a type of chocolate bar," Link yawned.
"Yeah, that's probably it. G'night, Latavianya."
"That's not funny," said Link and went to sleep.
About twenty miles away, in the sleeping town of Hyrule, there stood an ancient temple. The outside was white marble, strangely untouched by the barrage of centuries launched at it. During the day, the walls, awash with murals and religious carvings, glowed in the light flowing through the huge windows but now it was dark and quiet. For a temple though, it was quite bare; there were no benches, no pulpit. Only a small marble alter that stood at the end of the great hall, just a block with three grooves in it.
Through the dark there came a light. Not from anywhere in particular, just apparently radiating from the walls and the air. It was faintly green, and it brought with it a distinct smell of pine and dirt, the feeling of good, soft peat beneath your toes, and a sense of ageless growth.
The light grew in concentration around the altar. It continued to grow, a blazing sphere of verdurousness (I love thesauruses), until it imploded in a blinding flash. Somewhere, a choir of eunuchs sang their lungs out.
The darkness and the silence reclaimed the temple once more. The air cleared.
A pitter-patter of tiny feet crossed the temple floor.
"So this is what legs feel like," the new arrival noted.
Fairy life-cycles are complex and highly individual. Overnight, Navi had considered deeply her longings for these chocolate bars that interested her so much and had consciously accelerated her aging from the fairy infancy to a more exploratory age, 16. She found this would be the optimum age to offer her the greatest chance to explore these chocolate bar feelings churning within her.
With her new age there came new thoughts and feelings and the full vocabulary she had been longing for the last few days. She felt much calmer now and recalled her frantic gibbering with dread, like a drunk who'd made an ass of theirself.
On a whim, she changed her hair jet black, formed a silver ear ring out of thin air, and summoned up a moody black aura.
Link shifted in her sleep. Navi, warm and snug, was somewhat saddened when the girl woke, looked down and said, "Damn; you're still here."
It was unclear whether she was talking about Navi or her breasts, but the sprite decided it would be best if she apologised anyway.
"I'm sorry for the way I acted, Link. It was thoughtless and stupid of me and you have my promise that I'll do all I can to find you a cure. Can we make out now?"
"What?"
"Can we make up now?"
Gently Link reached down and plucked her out. She raised her to eye level and gave her a stare at where she guessed her eyes where.
"When I'm no longer a girl, then I'll forgive you."
The black aura blazed viciously and the fairy flew away to sulk in the backpack.
She was still there, 6 hours later, when Link arrived outside Hyrule Town gates.
Don't ask what I was thinking making Navi a lesbian because I have absolutely no idea.