Blessed

Prologue

A/N: Welcome back, my friends.

"Liiink, wait up!" Kiara whined, swimming after her best friend with a scowl twisted on her face. "You know I'm not as good at swimming as you are!"

He simply laughed in response - although, as always, there was no voice to add to the sound. It was something he was born with - he just couldn't speak, no matter how hard he tried.

He swam back to greet his friend, pushing easily through the water at her side as they swam to the edge of the river, where they had left their things earlier, being careful to avoid the sharp rocks. Andreas, one of their friends, had cut his foot badly on them and now walked with a limp and a cane everywhere he went. It had broken his heart, and Link felt bad every time he looked over. They were still friends, but they weren't nearly as close as they had been before - whereas Link and Kiara were inseparable.

"Can you hold up my towel, please?" Kiara asked. Link nodded and turned away as he held it up in a circle around her while she changed out of her bikini back into her other undergarments with her pale grey skirt and royal blue blouse. As usual, she remained barefoot, and held the towel up around Link as he changed back into his trousers.

"Hey, Link?" she questioned, tying her hair up in a high ponytail as he pulled on his plain white T-shirt and walnut-colored boots, then slung his crimson cloak over his shoulder and hefted up their empty picnic basket.

He tilted his head in response, and she encircled her hair in the towel before continuing. "Do you ever get this weird feeling you're being watched? Like...something is staring at you, and telling you to go away even though you haven't done anything wrong?" Link shook his head, an expression of confusion making its way to his face. "Oh. Well...I guess it's nothing. Whatever. Let's just get back to town - it's getting late, and you can't fight off an army of Bokoblins no matter how good you are with that sword."

He smiled at the mention of the sword. She had always been so jealous of him for it. An old shop owner had given it to him for free a few years ago, and instructed him to always carry it with him. He said there was something special about it, but he was never sure what it was. He had found it almost a hundred years ago, as a young teenager, in a long-forgotten house that had once been owned by a powerful warrior. The shop owner had also given him the cloak that he carried with him everywhere, along with the blue, diamond-shaped earring that he never took off.

He said the warrior looked a lot like Link - it was such a similarity that it scared him.

The sword was strange. It looked like it was made of some dark kind of metal, and it was kind of like it was two swords that had been forced to kiss and got stuck like that. Also, there were two things written on the ends - 'Owned' and 'Blessed'. He had known immediately what it said, although the characters weren't in the language he typically read in classrooms. The shop owner told him it was Hylian, from Hyrule - the country west of them.

There was a single line at the base of the blade, in the same ivory color as the characters, but he had never been able to decipher what it meant.

He shrugged it off, as always, and started to walk a little faster alongside Kiara. She was probably right, but he'd like to try against more than a couple dozen sometime. Bokoblins swarmed the city gates like ants at night. They had tried and failed to get in for decades now.

They would always fail as long as they had such powerful walls, and such courageous guards to line them.

"I - am - exhausted!" Kiara groaned, falling immediately to the plush carpet when they arrived at their house. She had been kind enough to ask her father to take Link in once his parents were killed in an unfortunate robbery. They were merchants, so they often traveled outside of town, and sometimes to Hyrule, on long trade routes. Link had lived with Kiara, her parents, and her little brother ever since.

"Kiara, Andreas visited earlier. He dropped off the present he said he was working on for you and told you to open it whenever," her mother called from the kitchen.

Link grinned as his best friend suddenly bolted to her feet and dashed to the kitchen, returning to the living room immediately. Link shut the front door behind him and sat on the couch beside her as she turned the small wrapped package over and over in her hands before finally untying the ribbon and taking a deep breath. She turned up to look at him.

"What if I'm overestimating it?" she whispered, a true fear that he had never known in her eyes. "What if I don't like it as much as I think I will? What if I shatter his heart into tiny pieces?"

He rolled his eyes at her and patted the top of her head, mouthing, 'You'll love it.'

He knew she would. Andreas had shown him what he was working on last month, and given him all of the design sketches to look over.

She took a deep breath and unwrapped it, immediately squealing. "It's beautiful!"

It was a 200-sided polygon in a spherical shape, carved out of wood and polished so that it was as dark as oak - the color of her hair. She twisted it open to reveal a dark velvet-lined chamber with a gorgeous set of earrings that Link hadn't heard about on the inside. They were silver hoops, plain enough, but on both of them were three gorgeous rubies each, cut in pure, spherical shapes.

She was jealous of his sword, but now she had something probably just as costly to brag about.

She put in the earrings immediately and examined her reflection in Link's own earring, smiling even though there were tears streaming from her eyes.

"Gods, he didn't need to go through this much trouble! I bet these cost a fortune!" She made a groaning noise and rubbed the tears from her eyes, setting the box on a table and pulling Link back over to the door. "We're going to thank him. Right now."

He followed her out, and he was about to join her in her jog to Andreas' house when he heard something.

"Link..."

He looked around, but didn't see anything, and so continued to walk in the direction of his friend's house.

"Link, are you there?"

He wished he could answer. The voice sounded so familiar... He felt a strange jab, like someone had stuck a dagger through his heart, when its ring stopped.

He couldn't say he didn't know this voice, because somehow...that wasn't true.

Kiara didn't bother to look behind her, because she knew Link wasn't one to run places very often. He liked to walk around and look at things, so she knew it would be a little while before he arrived.

He kept walking, but he kept looking.

"Can you hear me? I'm right over here..."

He turned his head in the direction he heard the voice most clearly from and saw something white in the shadows. Night had fallen, but the figure was illuminated by the moonlight, leaning back against a wall casually.

"You can hear me? Oh, thank the Goddesses. I was worried. Come over here, please. I want to speak to you. I remember your face, and your voice, but I'm confused. Do you remember me?"

Link approached the white figure, frowning in confusion. What did he mean he remembered Link's voice? The blonde had never spoken before, and if he had, he would know, wouldn't he?

From afar, nothing had seemed familiar, but as they grew closer to each other - Link blinked a few times.

He remembered this face - with the white bangs and lips and purple eyeliner, everything. He remembered that voice. And he didn't know how, but he missed it dearly.

Somehow, Link was driven to speak a name, and out of nowhere, he felt a soft, strangely familiar burning on his back as he whispered, "Ghirahim?"