Hyrule Field, date unknown.

The great expanse of Hyrule field that narrowed by the edge of the looming Kokiri forest was amiss; thankfully fog blocked out most of the carnage that had occurred.  Perhaps closer to the castle, where the worst of the battle had occurred, it was smoke and ash that rained down and blocked all the red that lay on the ground, but out here it seemed the spirits of nature wanted to block the grisly sight, and so they blanketed most of the ground in the mist so eerily concealing what few warriors survived and fled.

Many had passed this way earlier, most of them from the south, fleeing back toward their homeland and avoiding the battle.  Many of those men and women who were soldiers never made it back to where they came. Instead, they slowly collapsed somewhere on the lush grass and waited for death to come.  Some didn't even wait for that, they ended their lives with a quick blade or perhaps a stashed poison.  Several fairies flitted around, distressed, unsure what to do with so many carcasses laying around, but one stoic figure lay just inside the forest--the Deku tree, seemingly unfazed with all the death and disarray, never spoke or gave order to the fairies who wandered in the shadows.  In fact, he was oddly quiet.  

Hours after the battle died down, and the insects were singing a significantly more woeful tune than they had in awhile, and just as Navi was compelling herself to take refuge and think of the waste of it all no more, galloping hooves could be heard among the groans and wails of the dying.  They came from the north, possibly the castle itself, and even the animals in the forest pricked up their ears to the sound.  Those wounded and dying who were too afraid or too weary to move out of the way stirred and sighed, or else made themselves seem deader than they were.  It was impossible to tell in this fog, who was an enemy and who was a friend.  

The horse neighed loudly as the rider pulled harshly back on the reins; she saw an opening in the black-green of the forest wall, and now the four-legged creature paced warily to and fro as the rider contemplated entering.  The forest was off-limits, that was true.  Hylians would never set foot in its boundaries despite their egos or their courage.  The hooded rider, carrying some strange burden, couldn't seem to decide the best course of action; stay out here in a death field, or enter a death forest?

"Navi," spoke up the tree suddenly, scaring off several snoozing fairies, "Go tend to her."

"Who is she?" the tiny blue fairy asked, her wings flittering about in distress.

The tree didn't answer, but his original speech, though short, was heard by the woman on horseback outside.  She started at the booming voice, and then she and her horse both started when in several bright flashes, Navi transformed from her pea-sized regular form to that size of a respectable human.  Tripping out of the shelter of the Deku tree and onto the bloodstained field, she looked up at the rider curiously.  

This was a woman beneath the hood, a woman who looked frightened, whose face was covered in ash. Everything about her seemed to reek of fear, and sweat and death, things Navi had no concept of, but she nonetheless tried to smile reassuringly.  Even as she did so, something in the background moved; a frightened boar, who had a rider of its own, was squealing as its beaten and bloody owner tried to force it to move.  The noises were lost in the fray of dying noises, but Navi heard clearly what the Hylian woman spoke in her frail, too-calm voice: "I need shelter."

Navi bowed slightly, speaking in her childish tone, "Welcome to the Great Deku's Forest.  We will aid you."

"Take him," the woman said thankfully, extending a bundle.  

The fairy stretched out her arms, taking the bundle known as 'him' and staring down in total bewilderment.  She'd never really seen babies before, as the Kokiri had been alive centuries, long before she was appointed to the Deku Tree here in the forest.  A baby was a strange thing to hold, so small and funny and squirmy.  Usually in her smaller form, Navi wasn't used to holding things other than mushrooms or sticks or leaves.  She was so captivated by this beautiful golden-haired thing that she didn't notice at first, the sound of arrows in flight, or the agitated whine of the Hylian horse.  Confused, Navi looked up at the woman, whose face was screwed up in an expression of pain, and horror.

The large boar who held a near-dead rider suddenly lifted from the battlefield and ran in a strange line among the trees, dragging his hapless horseman along, but the damage was done.  Navi, still not quite understanding what had just happened, held the baby close to her and examined the Hylian woman's face again.  She wasn't speaking, but she was crying silently, and now both the woman herself, and the fairy toting a Hylian child, stared downward.  

Two bloody, pointed arrows stuck out from the woman's chest--not being a soldier but instead a noblewoman, she wore no armor.  Her silent assailant had been able to penetrate her heart, and as Navi jumped back in terror, the woman went rather limp and slid from the horse.  The beast cried out and reared up, and between his kicking legs, Navi spotted the ugly, gremlin-like shadow creature that had fired the arrows.  Now he shot at the horse, which bolted, and at Navi, who tripped backwards into the safety of the forest.  The creature with the warped bow scowled, hissed, plucked his helmet on his own head, nursed his wound, and contemplated travel toward the fallen woman.

In a show of motion as he'd never done before, not for the Kokiri or anyone, the Deku tree suddenly unraveled many of his roots, snaking out the tendrils to where the fallen woman lay, as Navi hurried toward the trunk, watching the trees and vines close in around where all the fairies, glowing brightly in different shades of blue, green, white and yellow, flocked to see the new child.  Just like Navi, none of them had ever seen a baby.

While they flitted around, the Deku Tree painstakingly and with the patience only a tree could show, laid her gently down on her side near him.  The rest of the trees had closed whatever gap lay between them and the outside, and now the woman with arrows in her back turned painfully on her side, throwing the hood back and exposing a head of hair so golden and long and beautiful it would almost make anyone forget the treachery outside the solitude of the forest.

"Take care of my baby," she said in a voice with only a minimal amount of fear, directly to the large, sad-looking tree.

"I will," he boomed in a melancholy tone, and then, "What is his name?"

"Link." The mother gave a sidelong glance at Navi, who looked back tearfully.  Then the golden-haired woman stared again at the majestic tree.  "You'll take care of him?"

"As long as time allows, before he will take care of himself.  Always, we fear, too young, but yes dear woman, I will."

Navi put the boy down; he was old enough to sit up by himself and he did so cautiously, his big eyes staring up at the array of lighted fairies and the old tree in curiosity and confusion.  He rubbed his eyes when Navi transformed back to her usual form, hovering over his head protectively.  The little boy was intaking all of the strange sights, but his panning vision paused when he saw his mother laying on her side, struggling to breathe, and now the little chubby hands that had covered his eyes from Navi's light reached out, and he spoke in garbled baby speak.

As though answering Link's question or plea, the Greak Deku tree moved his roots yet again, and this time even the small fairy's skin prickled at the feeling of the dense magic in the air.  It was not something she had felt in a long time, and soon the dark ground, the pool of blood that grew larger around the woman twisted and changed.  If she noticed it, she didn't move, perhaps because she was too weak.  But the blood soon sprouted up into a hundred, a thousand tiny flowers that at first maintained a dark crimson, afterwards fading to pink and then white.  

Another companion had arrived; he soared down and alighted on a heavy fallen tree very near the Deku, at the child's back.  The baby had no idea of this newcomer, who hunched over as though he was trying to hide. A moment later he fluffed what appeared to be feathers, and said to apparently the Tree, "The boy is the one who needs the protection."

"She wasn't a daughter of the forest, but she passes in a place where all death brings life.  It should always be remembered."

Not arguing with this wisdom, the owl tilted his heavy head and watched with the rest--Navi, the other fairies, the forest animals--as the rest of the field around the tree's roots blossomed in the white petals, surrounding the now still figure on the ground.  Even as the crowd stared on in silence and perhaps awe, the once-body turned to flowers itself, a small gust of air pushing up on the frail little things and causing them to come fluttering down among the tree bed.  All that remained in a few moments was the pair of arrows, which clattered and sunk to the ground, returning to their original state and disappearing beneath the soil where the flowers now swayed in the leftover breeze.  

"Even creators such as myself can never know the sacred love that belongs to a mother, whether human or animal," the Tree mused sadly, and his branches hung low to shelter the boy and his bed of perfumed flowers, which were the last memory of his mother.