Salink

Salink is the het ship between Link and Saria from The Legend of Zelda fandom.

Canon
Link and Saria have been childhood friends. Link was raised as a Kokiri but is actually a Hylian and Saria seemed to at least understand that he was different from the others. Link never received a fairy because he is not a Kokiri so others looked down on him and the leader Mido often picked on him. Saria was the one who often stood up for him and stayed by his side. This actually caused Mido to pick on Link even more because he was jealous of their friendship.

Link finally gets a fairy named Navi one day and Saria is very happy for him. She is even more happy for him after learning that the Great Deku Tree summoned him and is angry at Mido for stopping him but understand that Link needs equipment and tells him where to look. The Great Deku Tree later dies and Mido tries to blame Link for his death. Saria is the only one to stand up with him. Link later leaves the forest and Saria sees him off while giving him an ocarina.

Link later returns to the forest and finds Saria playing her ocarina outside of the Forest Temple. She teaches him her song which allows him to speak to her telepathically and cheer up the Goron leader Darunia. After obtaining the second spiritual stone, Link can ask Saria about the third stone and she will point him the right direction. After pulling the Master Sword, Link is trapped in the Sacred Realm for seven years while monsters begin to infest the forest.

At one point, Saria heads to the Forest Temple and is seemingly captured by monsters. If Link contacts her with the ocarina, she will be happy to hear from him and call out for help. Once Link defeats Phantom Ganon, Saria will awaken as the sage of the forest and give him the Forest Medallion. She tells him that she will always be his friend. After awakening the other sages, Saria will combine her power with them to help Link enter Ganon's Castle and seal Ganondorf away after he is defeated.

Fanon
Salink is a rather popular Zelda ship and is one of the most popular ships from the Ocarina of Time game. Link and Saria are close friends from their childhood and it is implied that Saria did have feelings for Link. Many assume that the message that Mido had for Link was the fact that Saria liked him. Some have a problem with the ship because Link grows up while Saria will remain a child forever. Because of this, many only ship child Link with Saria and ship him with somebody else as an adult.

On AO3, the romantic ship between Link and Saria is the most popular ship for Saria, slightly more popular than the friendship between the two. For Link, however, it is not among the top ships. A great part of the Salink stories also feature other ships involving Link, and any ship not involving Link is featured in, at the most, one story alongside Salink.

On Twitter, the Salink hashtag is sometimes, but not commonly, used for the pairing between the two. On DeviantArt, the tag is more commonly used for the pairing, although still not extremely common. On the latter website, there are also collections dedicated to the pairing. The ship also has a fanclub with 169 members.

The pairing had support on a website known as the Shipping Wiki as well, as their Shipping Wiki page had three comments describing the relationship in a positive way. One FANDOM user described this pairing as their OTP. Another FANDOM user said childhood relationships are usually the best. The third commenter, also a FANDOM user said this pairing was their favorite pairing ever. The page was around for over three years from October 2015 to March 2019.

Fandom
FAN FICTION
 * Link/Saria on FanFiction.Net

DEVIANTART

Trivia

 * Mido was supposed to tell Link that "Saria really liked..." but he cut himself off from the message. It is heavily implied that Saria did have feelings for Link.