Once upon a time, before the Goddess and then in her absence, the Lost Woods ruled over the land of Hyrule. The world began and ended beneath their boughs, and came into their own only when the Woods deemed them good and ready to shape the land with their own hands. But, once they left the Woods, they could never return, lest they give the Woods permission to lay claim to them again and mangle their bodies into something between life and death, forever tied to its cryptic will.

Old Hylian thinking suggested that the Woods were the physical manifestation of Farore herself, slowly growing around the world and leaving clean and new the earth where its oldest trees did, finally, die for good, but Navi had existed long enough to know this was untrue. The great Goddess above Farore had wrested the land of Hyrule from the trees by force, and Demise had razed his portion to go to war with her. But the Woods still existed everywhere, growing like roots in the liminal spaces of Hyrule and the realms beyond and anchoring itself beneath the skin of reality itself.

Death Mountain, proud and present beneath the glowing sun, was no exception. The vines of the Woods crept deep into its heart and peered at Goron City from within a tunnel near the bottom, like a creature in a cave watching the everyday lives of mice and contemplating ensnaring them all for a snack.

The Gorons had piled boulders in front of it to try and pretend they could keep it out of their world, but that was never enough. The vines and roots grew through them, stronger from the minerals in their stone hearts, and sprawled out lazily on the other side, as if to taunt the Gorons for even trying to hold them out.

Link found his way through the layers of Goron tunnels and pits to them almost immediately, like he could hear the voices of the fairies and the song of the Woods just as clearly as Navi herself could.

"Saria," he said, reaching out his hand and placing it on the crumbling stone.

"Link," said Navi, "We are here for the Spiritual Stone of Fire. You haven't forgotten, have you?"

"No," he said. "No. But I need to go here. I need to go here first, Navi. I know I do." He pressed his face into the rock, and for a moment Navi thought he would begin sobbing again. "I want to see Saria. She's waiting for me."

"The princess is waiting for you, too," Navi reminded. "And besides. Do you think the Woods will welcome you back? You left them."

Link nodded with a fervent sureness Navi had never seen in him before. "Yes. Yes, I know it. I can hear it." He pulled at the first stone with his tiny hands, the fingers still covered in red clay. It came loose and tumbled to the ground, and so he leaned in to pull down another one, and then another.

Honestly, his sudden confidence was alarming, but the whisper of the Woods grew louder and louder to Navi with each stone Link moved.

"Come here," they said. "We've missed you," they said. "We know. We know what you have done and you have not done. The forest meadow may think one thing, but we are not them. Come to us willingly, and we will never make you stay."

Link removed another stone, and the rock wall crumbled and spilled the rest of the way in front of him. A rush of cool, damp air followed the dust, and the echo of music followed from somewhere deep in the tunnel. He passed through the opening in the rock wall and towards it.

"Link," said Navi, "are you sure this is the way?" Her instructions had been to guide him to complete his quest, and honestly, she had no idea what the Woods might do to him with the Great Deku Tree gone and the arrangement between the Woods and the Valley turned on its head. She had been born there, and yet it was still as much of a stranger as it had been before that. "Do you remember what you said, about manipulation?"

Link said nothing, instead venturing in deeper, and then disappearing completely like the darkness within had opened its mouth and swallowed him.