Shades of Blue

The Lost Woods

The Woods are a mysterious place

Fog rolls thick in waves of never-ending gray

Voices call in tones impossible to trace

Luring and chasing the Lost away

Those unworthy will surely fade

Lest they carry the burden of the Goddess's blade

Link stood silently at the entrance to the Lost Woods, Epona's reins in one hand, shield in the other. The quiet was absolute, laying thick over the whole road, rolling out with the thick fog collecting at his feet. There were no birds chirping, no people walking down the path, no monsters snuffling around. There was only the quiet, and the fog, and the weak rays of sunlight leaking through the tops of the trees.

He had been standing here for at least five minutes, staring into the impenetrable fog. It was probably a little silly, to get all the way here and to freeze up at the last moment. He knew what waited for him at the end of this path, knew how absolutely crucial it was for him to complete this task. If he were honest, he knew that on several levels.

That was part of the reason why he had stopped, why he couldn't seem to drag himself forward another step. It was the Temple of Time all over again. That unsettled, unnerved feeling that came to him only when he confronted a piece of his past—his deeper past, and wasn't that a puzzle enough to think about—had been plaguing him more and more the closer that he came to the Woods. And now, standing at the entrance to the path, he was overwhelmed by it. He wanted nothing more than to turn away, to slip into obscurity, hide away and have some peace for once—

But he knew he couldn't do that. Even that old, deep part of himself knew that he couldn't turn away from this. This wasn't a burden he could ever escape. Maybe that's why it was so upsetting. He wasn't sure. The feelings were anything but clear, all tumbling over each other and mixing up in his mind, until he could hardly tell where any instinct he had really came from.

No, he had to do this. He had to go through these woods and seek out what was hidden among them. This was one piece of his murky past that he could not afford to lose permanently, or else he would lose everything else that remained.

Taking a steadying breath, he replaced his shield at his back, held tighter to Epona's reins, and stepped into the fog.

******

Rustling leaves, the occasional high-pitched giggle, smiling trees, and a heavy fog. That was all there was. The sun had been blotted out somewhere a bit back, the clouds hanging thick over the treetops, masking the bright day that shone down elsewhere in Hyrule. Here, it could have been high noon or the darkest midnight, and the forest would have looked exactly the same. Here, nothing ever changed, no matter how the weather calmed or stormed. Here, the forest was forever hanging in time, the same as it had been for millennia.

A child walked quietly, carefully through the fog, clinging to the reins of a large, auburn horse. His eyes darted every direction, rapid, nervous, shoulders shaking just a touch, perhaps in fear.

He didn't think he liked these woods very much. It was very foggy, and he couldn't see more than a few feet in front of him, no matter how hard he squinted. Every direction he took seemed to lead to more of the same—the same trees, the same dirt and leaves, the same fog. If he didn't have Epona, he thought he might have gotten lost, but she seemed to know where to go, and his feet did too (though he wasn't thinking about that).

His father had left him at the start of the path, nudged him forward, remaining by the torches that marked the forest's entrance. Link had stopped a few feet into the woods, looking back, expecting his father to come along too, but he didn't. His father had frowned, and told him to keep going, something dark in his eyes. He didn't know what it was, but he didn't like it very much.