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Once upon a time, the forest had children.
These children had many names. The eternal youth. The lost ones. The fairy children. Many cultures and many tongues have called them so very many things. But these children had a name for themselves, as well.
The Kokiri.
They lived in the hearts of the forest—special pockets of deep wild magic scattered throughout the trees—regardless of what continent or island the forest currently held its heart.
That is the thing, the crucial thing, that one must understand about the forest: it is singular, and absolute. The mortals, the beings of blood and bone, imagined each cluster of wood to be a unique ecosystem, a body unto itself and not a limb of a greater being. They see the forest as it is in the land of their own imagined ownership to be a severed body to the stretch of deep wood across the world.
They speak, in their limited language of words, of forests. Containable, and plural, divided in their imagined and contrived severance of the land into lines drawn upon parchment they call maps.
The fae know better, always have. They see the stretches of wood as they really are, separate organs of the same being, different limbs of the same body.
And the fairies find this being beyond precious. It is the forest, after all, that gave them their children.
As one of the three parents of a Kokiri child, a fairy could not but help to love the forest, to care for it as a member of its own family. And fairies will always, always care for their families. From sister to the rare brother to child and all of said child's parents.
A fairy's love is strong. Iron-clad and undying. It does not falter with the seasons, does not wane with the moon. It is aware, always, of the beating magic core of those that were precious to it, its child, the forest, and the Great Mothers.
The Kokiri's second parent, loved in waves. The forest shifted, changed. It grew and shrank through the ages, faded and flourished with the seasons. It protected the child, sheltered and fed it's material form, gave it things from which to learn from. Always, the forest guards what is its.
The third parent of a Kokiri was insignificant in the grand scheme of things. A impermanent life form, a brief coalition of matter and energy, a single moment in the eyes of gods. Human, usually, but not always. They don't need to be human. But it is the human creature (of Hylian, Sheikah, of other clans and nations) that most often finds itself in the position to father (a not quite accurate term) a child of the forest.
Children are made of three things. Body, spirit, and energy. Of every race, of every people, these three things must be present. Most races get all three in part from two parents equally. The children of the forest, however, are special. They get all of their share of each from one parent, and it always goes the same.
A mortal stands before the Maku tree, an ancient power sized up in eyes not capable of comprehending the scope of it, but merely that it exists. This is a scene that has played out many times before, and will happen many times again.
And yet every time is unique, precious, one of a kind.
On this particular occasion, the mortal is hylian, not just in race but in origin, which is rare around this particular limb of the forest. It is a male hylian, and young, even by their standards of age, which are mere seconds to the forest.
There is something… off, though, about this one. Something that sets him apart from the other mortal children that have come to this place, that have walked this path.
There is an energy, a power humming through the air, tethering his body to the ground, a lighting bolt through his spirit.
When this mortal child walks into the grove of the Maku tree, the forest sits up, and pays attention.
It goes the same way as it always does.
A plea is issued. Something about power and time, about the wheel of the world and the flow of its seasons, the specifics do not matter to the fae. This is not their deal.
But deals are their business.
They crowd around, subtle, in the fringes of the shrubbery, and they wait.
The Maku tree answers the plea, it makes the bargain clear, the terms concise.
The mortal does not listen.
They never do.
Satisfied, the child leaves, and the sense of power that follows them leaves a vacuum in the air. But this is not relevant to the Child that is about to be. What matters is that, in failing to negotiate payment for what was offered by the forest, as is customary, the defacto payment was taken.
It didn't hurt. The mortal will never notice it, so out of touch the mortals are with their own spirits. And this one in particular had a spirit so large, so vast, that the usual trimming was but a mere leaf, falling gently from the tip of a bough.
He will never notice.
But the spirit, the fraction, the part and parcel that has been left behind, it falls gently into the earth, where spirits naturally want to go.
And from there, nature takes its course.
With only this one part of a life now in the earth, there are many ways that this process can go. There are so many factors, so many things that could and have, on different occasions, happened to such a small drop of soul.
But this is not a story about what cold have happened. This is a story about what did.
The shard of spirit is taken up by the roots of the Maku tree, is is guided, by timber and water, gently up into the branches, off to the end of the shooting bud of a coming limb. This takes time. This takes energy and effort, and another choice must be made.
Many things could have happened, but this is about what did.
A fairy makes a choice. Something about that particular deal struck them. Something about this specific fraction of a spirit calls to them, says mine and yours and asks to be owned.
The deal it is about to act on is ancient, and immutable, like the bargain between the leaves and the sun. Terms do not need to be negotiated. The fairy simply need to act.
So act it did.
It follows the flow of the spirit through the tree, adding energy to it's motion, adding strength, adding an anima to the flow of the substances. By the time the spirit reaches the end of it's journey to the tip if the branch, the Maku tree has barely expended any energy. Which is good. The tree must save its energy, if it is to provide the body, as is custom.
From here on, nature must take its course again. A bud forms, a bright green mass extends, oblong and fragile despite its density.
And then, the strangest thing happened.
The mortal came back.
This is not entirely out of the ordinary, it has happened a handful of times before. The usual script is run. The mortal makes another plea, strikes another deal. He gets to vague location of an artifact, and another drop of his spirit falls off as gently as a petal from a flower in spring.
This has happened before. It will happen again. In these specific circumstances, where a fairy has already Claimed the soul, and the Maku tree has already begun a body, but the Child of the forest is not yet done germinating, the custom is to add the spirit to that growth, rather than begin a new one, or to use the spirit for an alternate purpose altogether.
Custom, as pacts, are always followed here.
When the next packet of spirit comes to the developing body, the fairy is pleased, validated by its choices. This spirit was already strong, and now? It will be fortified further. This one was definitely worth the effort, she knows. She pours more of her magic, her energy, her will to live into the growth.
This one, she knows, ill be worth it.
The mortal comes back again.
This is nearly unheard of. Nearly. Three deals have happened in the past, but it is exceedingly rare. Three deals leading to three deposits of spirit into a ingle Child of the forest is, at least in this particular grove, entirely unique.
The fairy is very, very pleased.
What is hers is plentiful, and what is hers is strong.
The bud grows.
Inside, a body is built, carefully constructed inch by inch. It will take a long time, to finish, for trees are very good at a great many things, but they are not particularly fast at growing.
This is fine, this is no matter. Fairies do not tend to concern themselves with time outside of their interactions with mortals. Be it decades or centuries, the fairy is happy to do this. To give a drop of magic here and there, every few days, to make sure that the little growth has enough will in it to live, when it is done growing.
No one, not a single stalk of grass, was expecting the mortal boy to come back a fourth time.
Or a fifth.
Or a fifteenth.
There is no protocol for this specific situation so the traditional way of dealing with repeat offers is followed. By the time the boy finally seems to have decided to no longer come to the grove, the sheer thrum of power in the growing bud is…
It is something that they have never, in this arm of the forest, seen outside of the gods.
There is a disquieting that happens, an upset. There are fae that are jealous of her, of the Child that she will own, that she will claim. Of the power that is must have, of the abilities that it will surely carry.
But none dare to confront her, none dare to say anything about it directly. A deal is a deal and a contract is a law. The law cannot be broken by the fae without them unbecoming, without them no longer being what it is that they are.
So no one fights her for her child. No one even says that they wish to.
But she can see that they wish to. It is in all of the things that are left unsaid, in the hollow empty places where a harmony ought to be, where her chimes are left to be discordant against the symphony.
She cares not.
Over time, the child grows, the bud becoming larger than her and then larger that a sapling. It grows and grows until finally, one day, it begins to open.
It has been a long time. Of course it has ben a long time. Bodies take time to make, but it has been so very long.
The child, however, was very much worth the wait.
It is small, and soft, and takes the general form of its mortal parent. But there are changes that speak to its other parents, of the givers of the body and magic.
Where the mortal child all those years ago was pale, this child is dark. Earth-brown hair and skin the soft brown of freshly grown bark. There are freckles, scattered across its face like dirt sprinkled over roots poking out from the ground, and when it opens its eyes, they are the same brilliant green as its mother glows.
The child is beautiful, and as the forest quickly discovers, as sweet as sugar.
He—the child discovers himself to be a he—is truly made of all three of his parents. He is as rooted in the earth as the Maku tree, concerned with the feel of the soil, the taste of the air. He is a strong as the hylian was, and just as stubborn. This surprises none of the fairies in the forest, for there was much spirit that went into this boy.
And he is like his mother, full of surprises.
The biggest surprise was the fact that he exists in the first place. That there was a bargain made that there was a fairy that stepped in to act. There has not been a child of the forest in a very, very long time.
There was something about that spirit, about that mortal and the soul inside him, that made the fairy want to go back to the ancient deal, before the Dark and the dying and the violation of the balance of the world.
There was something in that young mortal that was ancient, and strong, and she wanted it.
And she has it now, and he is beautiful.
Link, she named him, for the most famous of his kind. They all know of Link, in the forest, of the Child of the Deku tree in Hyrule that went out of the forest one day, that left and did not return. That, is the whispers of the wind are to be believed, was a Hero, before he died.
Because of course he died. All Kokiri that leave the forest do, unless—No, that does not matter, ancient history. It was so very long ago, before the dying, it does not matter.
What matters is that names have power, they have a magic of their own to them. And traditionally, there would be a naming by the other Children, but Link, he is growing up alone. So his mother names him Link. After the Hero of the Kokiri, and, if the Maku tree is to be believed, after his mortal father.
There is power, in names.
She should have realized then what her choice meant.
But it does not come to pass, her consequences, not for a very, very long time.
Link does not grow up, but he does change, all living things do, even immortal children. He learns, and he plays, and he makes himself, thoroughly, unavoidably loved.
No one that knows him can help but to love him. He is precious, to all of his family, to all of the fae that call him brother. He laughs like fairy chimes, and dances like rain, runs like a deer between the trunks of the trees.
His presences reminds them all, in the forest, of what it is that they have lost. He reminds them why they used to have children.
Things are good. Things are peaceful. She has been so very brave, and Link has been so very kind, and there is a happiness in the grove that there has not been since before the imprisoning war.
The other fairies whisper. They think that maybe, Link ought to have siblings that ae his own kind, as opposed to his pure fae ones. There are murmurings of desire for other children.
And then the world ends again.
It is sudden, and it is violent, and it tears through the world like a bolt of lightning.
Magic twists, breaks, comes apart and is remade in a corrupted weave of what it was meant to be. The Maku tree is old, and ancient, and a mighty god of the land.
He holds out as long as he can.
She sees the signs. The fountains are drying up. The leaves of the Maku tree are wilting, the bark is flaking, there is only so much longer until the obvious tipping point that they have passed becomes apparent to Link. Her sweet, precious, kind boy.
The last and only of his kind, as far as any of them are aware.
And he is full of so much love.
She will not allow him to die, not like his home is dying. Slow, without remark, without acknowledgement.
She wants him to fight.
The only being she knows that is stronger than the Maku tree is the truly ancient Deku tree, which was old when the Maku tree sprouted. If there is anything, anything in the body of the forest that can weather this breaking, it would be that god.
It is a slim, fragile hope, but it is a hope.
She has to take it.
Names have power, they are omens. And link must now leave the forest. He ought to die, of course, as a Child of the Forest. To wither away without its power and magic keeping him immortal, and alive.
But there is a way. Just one, mad way, that he could make the trip to the Lost Woods. To the other pocket of magic that can keep him, hold him.
She makes her plans.
Link studies maps. He studies them hard under her direction, the reading them, the making them. He must learn cooking. Real cooking, not pretend. He must learn to defend himself. In this she struggles to teach, but she tries.
Link is so sweet, always, like sugar. He worries for the fading that he can see around himself, she knows, but he follows the lessons dutifully. He has always taken directions so well.
She hopes that the mortals, is there are any left for him to encounter, do not take advantage of this. Do not lead him into danger, into being a tool for them to use.
She will not be able to protect him from them.
In the end, there is only so much time. What a strange concept, for an immortal being, to be out of time. To feel as though time is running short. She tells Link where he must go, and how to found his way. And she tells him that he must hurry.
She tells him why, as gently as she can.
There is a dying happening, because of the magic. Because of the corruption that is bleeding into the water, into the air. That he must go into danger in order to be safe, for this grove will not be able to shield him much longer, but another might.
Might.
He takes it all better than she could have hoped. Better than any fairy could have expected him to. There is a set to his face, a look in his eyes, that reminds her of ones so very long ago that had just the same look in them as a mortal boy shed a piece of his soul in this very grove.
And then she does what she must do. The final gift that she can give.
The fae are creatures of magic, and magic is nothing more or less than energy. A fairy is a being made of pure energy, energy made matter, made something truer than flesh. Fairies are generous with their magic, with the stuff that makes them, they give it away freely.
But there is a limit to generosity, a outermost boundary to how far kindness can stretch. Fairies can give other beings life yes, but only to a point. Only up to the threshold of the one way door, that final tug that would unravel the fairy itself in its entirety.
She pours magic into her child, and reaches that point, that final point of choice. She makes it, and keeps giving.
Her power ceases to be her and becomes him, fills him with enough pure Life that he should no longer need to be bound to the grove, to the passive buzz of fae magic in the air.
Her final act is not to save her child, for in a world like this one is threatening to become, no fairy can save anyone. No, her last act as a sapient creature is not to save Link.
It's to give him a chance to save himself.
All Children of the forest have three parents. Link knows this, for he was taught well. Children of the forest do not age, they do not die, and they do not leave the forest.
Rule of three, always three.
He has no parents left to him.
He must break all three laws.
There is no other way.
He meets a woman, a mortal woman, the first he has ever seen, on the road to the Deku tree. She is kinds and she is sweet,and she feels like one of the Mothers that he is already staring to miss so very dearly.
She tells him more than his mother did, about the reason for the magic dying. About why the world feels the way that it does.
And Link, well… he thinks he can help.