Baturday circles overhead in wider and wider arcs as Lelith and Greko determine what they should do next.  

They don't find the remains of any animals...but they do find a wagon eventually.  There appears to be a keg in the back of it...

Greko points to the cart "Baturday set down there. Lelith keep your eyes peeled for any dead lumbering about. There's Rum's cart, possibly....."

"Alright, we're going down!" Lelith hurriedly jumped off and flew down toward the cart to inspect for anything, anything that could point toward the children being alive.

There are no signs of Sorry or Malon in the cart, though it does point in the direction of the Kokiri Village.  The cart, however, no doubt used to belong to the Twilight Embers; the barrel in the back is labeled as one of Rum's own Dragonclaw Ales.  

"Let's go to the village! They might be there!" Lelith was quick to push Greko forward so they could fly there. She didn't forget to note where Rum's ale was, however.

A flight over the old Kokiri Forest reveals how the woods now mirror the perversion of the rest of nature, and the world at large.  The trees are miscolored and misshapen, and the corpse of what was once the Great Deku Tree looms in the distance, now enormous but barren.  

It only takes a day or so for Baturday to circle above the skeleton of what looks like the Kokiri Village below...

Before Greko was pulled back to Baturday he quickly bonked the keg shrinking down small enough to put into his pocket...."Alright, alright, let's move, let's move....." Greko hops back onto Satruday and does as Lelith asked going back to Kokiri Village. Greko tells Baturday to land so Lelith could look around a bit with Greko's help "I know you are anxious to find them but remember it has been some time since the event and chances of finding them alive are slim. Be careful, don't be rash...."

The village is dead, that much is certain.  While it's only been a month and a half or so since the Twilight Embers saved the Great Deku Tree and passed through Kokiri Village, the village is completely devastated.  Buildings look like they've been rotting down for years.  Grass and weeds, all a sickly yellow or flesh colored, are high enough that the Kokiri could have walked through them without being detected.  

Still, there is a smell in the air...a smell of smoke.  A small fire crackles nearby....

Greko saddened by the display of death and destruction left behind by Ganon smells smoke....fresh smoke. "Lelith, my ears my not work so well but my sniffer still does...Do you smell smoke? Fresh smoke not the remains of this village. Someone is near."

The smoke is trackable, quite easily in fact, to a nearby thatch-roofed hut.  The wooden walls are in shambles, and strange mushrooms grow where the wood is already starting to decay at an alarming rate.  A cursory glance reveals that there is a small fire inside with what appears to be a rabbit (oh please, please let that mess be a rabbit...) roasting on a spit over the coals...but whoever was cooking it is no longer there.  They seem to have missed the chef by a minute, at most.

Greko looks around feeling badly for the rabbit as it singes away "Hello? Hello? I am friend and not dead"

"They were just here. If we take to the air, we might see them. I don't believe someone on foot could outrun us!" Lelith took off into the air once more and overlooked the area from a bird's point of view. 

"Hello?"  A voice says.  It's restrained and nervous, from the darkness nearby the fire.  Greko, remaining behind on the ground, see's a head pop up from behind a fallen log.  It's shrouded in a cloak, but it's obvious that the person beneath the cloth is a female Kokiri.  "Greko?  Is that you?"

"Indeed! Indeed! Come out and sit with me. Lelith is here too but in her haste she took off to the sky to look for you. We can wait here for her to return. You know Lelith, full of hasty decisions." Greko sits on a log near the fire. 

"Many hasty decisions."  The voice says.  The Kokiri reaches up and pushes the hood of the cloak away from her face, revealing that it is indeed Sorry.  "Where have you all been?  You left us to the horde.  And to the chaos.  And to this dead world."

Greko rubs the back of his neck and smiles a bit "Well, I was struck down by the devil himself but right before I used my last bit of power to whisk those away I could see. Unfortunately, you were not in my line of sight, so I could not help  you. However, the fates did not feel my time was done, no longer Greko the Green but Greko the White, I was resurrected to aid my friends. At the first chance Lelith and I got, we came to find you and....oh what was the other's name? Oh dear my head still hasn't recovered from being slain. Alas, here we are found you at last! How are you? How have you survived? What have you seen?"

"The other girl's name is Malon, Greko!" Lelith said as she suddenly dropped from the sky behind Sorry. Without a word, she scooped her up into her arms. "That foul fiend-god Ganon has for some reason taken a fancy to me. He took control of my mind and twisted it to suit his dark and forbidden desires. I had to fight its influence and then escape. Afterwards, I was imprisoned by my so called allies though they have come to see reason and judged me innocent. Once I was freed, I did everything I could to come find you and Malon."

"The fault lies in Rumble and the others who abandoned you to your fates and ran away with their tails behind their legs!" Lelith looked furious as she mentioned them. "Where is Malon?"

The Kokiri is less than thrilled to see Lelith.  She is scooped up, and begins to summarily push herself free of her grip.  

"It's not just their fault!"  Sorry said, landing on the ground and finding her distance from Lelith.  "I should have never left my home to go with you!  I've lost everything!  Kora!  Now Malon!"

Sorry actually growls, her hands coming up to twist into her own hair as she cries.  

"How I survived?"  She says, reddening eyes darting from Greko to Lelith and back.  "I was unlucky.  That's how I survived.  We tried to flee when...when whatever happened happened.  And we got all the way back to Lon Lon Ranch before the undead killed Malon.  I don't know how I got away after that.  I stumbled across the calamity until I was back here.  And you know what?  I wish I hadn't.  I wish I'd died all the way back there with Malon, but I'm too scared to die."  

Her chest is heaving.  She huffs with anger.  Hurt.  Resentment.  A hundred different emotions.  

"I wish you hadn't found me.  Now you can go.  I will not go with you this time.  I've gone as far as I'm going."  

Lelith's eyes narrowed as she looked down at the angry Kokiri girl, "Sorry, you should mind your tongue. Your home was but a smoking ruin and you were in grief. You found a purpose, either to wallow and drown in it or pick up your arms and fight for your people and home. Ganon would have come to you sooner or later whether you came with us or not. You choose to fight, to give yourself a chance to change things for the better. We have done much, whether you believe it or not."

"So you will follow, Sorry. I did not suffer at the whims of a fiend-god, lay unconscious for days, be tried for crimes I did not commit willingly, be antagonized by all the other bands of so called 'heroes', fight off Darth Vader and the servants of the Dark Lord, and scour half a continent in search of Malon and you. Just in the end for you to turn away my hand," Lelith did not relent and brought her closer into her embrace.

"All of this, I did for you Sorry. I did for Malon. I did for Kora. Death is only transient. I have found a way for it to be reversed. You will not squander all of our efforts. We will go pick up Malon and then we will be bringing them back. Isn't that right, Greko?" Lelith turned to her friend and gave him the longest and most piercing of stares.

Deception Roll: 32

Greko stands by looking at Lelith shaking his head. “If this is how you wish to go about it so be it”