The medical room was silent as Sheik sat on the stool. He hadn’t spoken the whole night since the accident. Sheik winced visibly as Nabooru tightened a bandage over his ribs. Link sat in the corner watching. He wanted to know what had happened between Sheik and the Garo, but Sheik wasn’t going to talk. Link knew him too well to think he was going to admit defeat.
Zelda sat on the other side of the room, looking down into her lap and fiddling with her fingers. She looked up at Sheik as he gritted his teeth at the pain. The Guerdo woman tightened the bandages even more.
“ If that hurts too much kid, you can just tell me,” Nabooru grumbled, seeing Sheik twitch, trying to keep from showing any weakness at the operation. His mask was still on over his face, but his eyes showed all the pain he was experiencing right now.
Sheik stayed silent still, even frowning at her words and grunting as if he wasn’t hurting at all. “ I’m…fine.” Sheik finally got out.
“ You call four broken ribs, a minor concussion and a sliced up side fine? You’re a strange kid, Sheikah, you could have gotten much worse from a severe fall like that!” Nabooru shot at him, a little angry. Even though she liked Sheik and Link, they were both strong good men, as strong as her people. But a suicide run with a demon was never a smart thing to do, even for a Sheikah, who where trained to be fighters since childhood.
“ I had to come from the sacred realm today to fix you up. And all you tell me you is that you don’t need any help,” Nabooru sighed.
“I’m fine!” Sheik said stubbornly as Nabooru untightened the bandage and Sheik let go of the breath he was holding.
“ By Farore’s feet kid, stop being stubborn,” Nabooru shouted.
The room turned silent again. Even Sheik seemed to be effected by Nabooru’s burst of anger. Link sat forward in his seat, sighed and looked at Sheik as Nabooru grumbled and continued her work.
“ Sheik, what was that Garo doing here?”
“ I do not know,” Sheik growled, narrowing his eyes, but not directing them at Link.
“ Sheik?” Zelda asked, getting his attention. Sheik looked at her behind the mask, his eyes frowning for some reason. “ What is a Garo?” Zelda asked curiously.
“ A Sheikah warrior that has been turned evil by a curse,” Sheik answered strongly, his voice nipping at something more than he was telling them. Zelda knew she shouldn’t intrude, but she felt he was hurting right now about something more then being injured (lightly) by a demon.
Zelda looked over at Link as Sheik turned his head away again, looking down at the floor and painfully letting Nabooru clean the gash in his side. Link shrugged, seeming not to know what she was puzzled with about their mysterious friend.
“ I encountered a few in Termina while I was there years ago, but they weren’t like this one…”
“ How did you come to that?” Zelda asked curiously. Sheik suddenly darkened his statement as Link continued.
“ Well, for one thing, they didn’t jump fifteen feet into the air, or speak as well as this one did.” Zelda nodded slightly, trying to absorb all the information, looking Sheik over briefly she continued to ask questions.
“ So your saying this one was some other form of demon?”
“ No, I’m just saying it might by a pseudo demon, or a kinship of it maybe, I can’t be sure of what it was without knowing more information.
“ Link, can I speak with you please?” Zelda asked after a confusing moment of silence. Link nodded and got up, walking past Sheik, who watched them walk outside.
“ I must come with you, Zelda.” Sheik said, referring to his duty of being her sworn guardian. Sheik got up from the stool and Zelda was about to tell him no, but she was interrupted by Nabooru.
“ Oh, no, kid, you’re not getting out of here this easily! SIT! A lot of good it’ll do if you go around bleeding on everything!” Nabooru shouted, then roughly pushed his shoulders down and Sheik winced and gave her a look that would have had a full grown Lizafos running away screaming on it’s tip toes.
“ Sheik, Nabooru’s right you must stay here, I need to speak with Link anyway, alone.”
“ But I…”
“ STAY!” Zelda warned. Sheik grunted and sat down willingly as Zelda closed the door. Zelda waited, looked at the door with her hand on the handle, shaking her head about something. Link leaned down to try to see her face, but she turned to him quickly.
“ Link, I think Sheik is hiding something about this Garo thing.” Zelda whispered, slowly walking from the door.
Link followed right beside her, his hands behind his back.
“ Why would you ever think that?” Link asked, smiling at the small joke.
“ Link, you know him better then I do, and I’m afraid that what ever that Garo was, it was here for a reason.”
“ The ones that I met didn’t have a purpose, just to attack me.” Link mentioned, arguing with her suggestion.
“ I’m going to have the guards take extra shifts for the next few nights. I…I just feel like this was more then what it seems, I don’t think we should blow it off like we usually do!”
“ Why do you think that?”
“ Because Sheik hasn’t mentioned anything to me about it, and you told me that he ran after it without alerting the other guards, Sheik would never do that, it’s not his way.” Zelda explained her voice a little suspicious.
Link stopped, starting to catch on. “ Do you think he knew that one, or has a connection to it in some way?” Link said, a little louder then he wanted to be, even though he had just realized her point and was a little excited by it.
“ Yes…that’s what I’m saying. He hasn’t acted like himself since he woke up in the medical room a couple of hours ago. I just want you to try and find out for me what he’s thinking Link. I thought I would never say this, but I’m worried about Sheik’s safety.”
“ Your really sure about this, I mean Sheik is a pretty mysterious person by personality anyway!” Link mentioned.
Zelda walked up to Link and put her hands on his shoulders. “ I’m sure of it.”
Link nodded, smiling slightly. Then bowed to Zelda and started walking away.
“ Oh. And Link!” Link stopped and turned around again. Zelda smiled wickedly at him. “ Don’t think I don’t know you were disobeying my orders, going out of guard duty?!.” Zelda added, giving the confident man something to shake about in the time being, before he was around the hallway and out of sight.

* * * * *

The night was cold, the storm clouds still poured rain onto the streets, showers that stopped and started again. It was a miserable day in Hyrule. The only ones outside that night were the recruited guards, who had to take double shifts because of the attack last night.
Link sat in his room in the castle, it had been his home for a couple of years, but Link usually didn’t sleep that often in this room. Link looked out of the window, leaning against the windowpane and trying to think clearly. He had fallen asleep a couple of times, but had been awoken by a dream that would start out just like tonight.
Dark clouds would gather above him. He saw Sheik leaning over someone, lying
motionless on the ground. Then he would wake up, it was strange. Link had been trying to sleep for the last five hours, but that dream had awakened him every time, like it was trying to force him to stay awake for something.
Link thought about Sheik. He hadn’t seen the Sheikah all day, not since Zelda asked Link to figure out what was making him so quiet. Link heard someone knock on the door. “ Come in,” Link said, his voice sleepy and dim.
Link saw the slender figure of someone he hadn’t seen for the last day as well walk through the door and into the dark room. “ Link?” came a soft woman’s voice.
“ Over here.” Link yawned, getting down from the closed window and walking across the room.
“ Can I light a lantern, it’s very dark in here,” The soft voice asked a tint of wonder in her voice.
“ Yeah, go ahead, I was just trying to think. I can think better in the dark.” A flame flared from across the room, and the beautiful woman lit the lantern. Looking across the room, her eyes sparkling as she saw Link.
“ You can’t sleep either tonight?” The women asked, standing up straight.
Link looked the human over, she wore peasant cloths, but she didn‘t need fancy clothes to look good. Mayoree walked lightly across the room towards Link, her head low.
“ No, too much to think about, Sheik falling off of a roof, demon attack, you know…the normal stuff.”
“ Demon! Not like…”
“ No Mayoree, not like Musend.” Link sighed, thinking back to that point where he had met lovely Mayoree. It had only been a couple of months, and already the nightmare of an adventure was already becoming a vague memory. Link remembered that he had been dragged back in time four hundred years by a dragon, a wise and respectful silver colored beast, who told him that something was threatening to alter his future. Link had accused the king, Lithoen Chimera, but learned that his high commander, Musend, was toying him with. Link remembered Musend, that twisted man who willingly let a demon take his body. Link dug deeper into his faded memory. But all he found was Musend’s black eyes haunting him, those demon eyes that Ganondorf had once held in his hated stare. And his strength, like that of a god, he was five times more powerful then Ganon, even with the Triforce. Link ran over all the information again, Musend had also been Ganondorf’s ancestor, Link remembered that part too clearly. And Link had learned that Ganondorf’s power had actually come from an ancient demon lord who would progress from one body to another every generation of new Guerdo boys.
And to Link, Ganondorf never seemed to be done torturing with his revenge for death from his grave, even from the fires of hell Ganon still seemed to have a strong hold on Link’s every move.
“ So what has Sheik done this time?”
“ He fell fifty feet into a cobble stone road!” Link sighed, shaking his head.
Lovely Mayoree sighed back.
Link had never understood the mysteries of time travel. Mayoree, being as smart as she was, had tried to explain it to him. But Link had never quite caught on to it. If he had to go back in time to change the future, but he was here and it had already changed why would he need to travel back to change it when it’s already done? “ Paradox,” Link whined, throwing himself on the bed face down and closing his eyes.
“ Paradox?” Mayoree asked curiously, sitting next to him. Link looked up at her, positioning his head from the fluffy blankets. Link looked into her large eyes, her human ear poking out from her long auburn hair. Her hair was always waved from the wind, she smiled at his silence and leaned down on the bed as well. “ It’s a kind of time loop, it’s created when you go back in history and change something that was different in your own time.
“ I know.” Mayoree said with a smirk on her fair face.
“ I was thinking about time travel, how I never remember how I got there, or got back through a worm hole. I feel like it’s taking an effect on my mind,” Link sighed. “ And my body,” Link added in the middle of a yawn. Mayoree only smiled at him wider.
“ I’ve heard time travel can turn your mind to mud if you do it too much, and I think it might have slowed your aging process, Kono taught me that.” Mayoree suggested simply.
Link smiled at the name Kono. Remembering the kindly old Moblin’s wise decisions.
Link remembered the Moblin tribes vaguely too. They used to be peaceful, wise, and magical creatures of the world, before the Hylian race wiped out the tribes that refused to fight against them, for money, or land just died out later. It was a sad fate for the creatures that Link had once thought to be loyal, stupid, and brawny beasts with no respect, or hygiene. After Link had met the ancient shaman, his hate for the species turned around to envy.
Link sat up again, looking deeply at her, determined. “ Theirs also another matter I’m worried about, May, was I right to bring you back with me, I just want you to be happy, and I’m not sure taking you away from your time and home was the best thing…”
Mayoree cocked her head, her dark brown eyes blinking twice. “ Link, the reason that I choose to come back with you was because I felt my life wouldn’t have been very fulfilling anyway.”
Link let go of the breath he was holding. “ That’s good to know.”
“ I’d better go Link, Zelda’s having another council meeting tomorrow, she invited me to come this time.”
Link followed her to the door. “ Mayoree?” Link asked in a low voice. She turned to him as he unlatched the door. “ Be careful, I have a bad feeling about this storm.”
“ I can take very good care of myself Link, thank you!” Mayoree said and whisked out of the door, but not without giving him a small kiss on the cheek. Link smiled and closed the door slowly watching her gracefully run down the dark hallway and out of sight.
That was her. Link thought, she was a strong willed woman, smart, beautiful and a very talented fighter. Link didn’t know what it was that captivated him about her, because none of those qualities really caught him on her. She had always been a true friend to Link, no more then that. Link had felt something different about her since the day he had seen her in the Alley Street of Hyrule’s dark past. All that was racing through his mind the entire time the was there was about her. And even now Link was still amazed by her many talents and quick wit.
Link sat down at the desk and blew out the lantern, tonight, Link knew he wouldn’t sleep.