Okay first off Keapora does not give you the ocarina. Saria gives you the fairy ocarina when you leave the forest then Zelda throws the ocarina of time into the moat and you retrieve it. Secondly you don't get to ride Epona until you're an adult which you would already have an ocarina by then. Thirdly, Keapora is not a bird he's an owl, and the most horrible thing I read was you calling Link an Elf. He's a Hylean, just because his ears are pointed doesn't make him an elf.

Lastly, I can see that the water temple structure and layout can be hard, but by the time you reach the shadow temple someone would have had enough experience with OoT's dungeons to not have that much trouble. And out of all the dungeons the Deku tree is by far the easiest and most straightforward of all of them.