How do I output a single menu link in drupal 7 knowing it's $mlid?

Question

I'm using menu blocks with fixed parents, and because of this only the children are rendered... but I would like to render the parent links. I am able to get the $mlid of the parent, but that is as far as I can get. theme_menu_link throws an error because menu_link_load returns an array with keys like [title] [href], instead of [#title] [#href] like theme_menu_link expects. Can someone tell me how to render the output of a single menu link? Thanks!

function mytheme_preprocess_region(&$vars){
    if($vars['region'] == "footer-top"){
            foreach($vars['elements'] as $key => $item){
                    if(array_key_exists('#block', $item)){
                            $block_type = $item['#block']->module;
                            if($block_type == "menu_block"){
                                    $plid = $item['#config']['parent_mlid'];
                                    $parent_menu_link = menu_link_load($plid);
                                    $parent = theme('menu_link', $parent_menu_link);

                                    $output .= '<section>' ./* $parent .*/ $vars['elements'][$key]['#children'] . '</section>';
                            }
                    }
            }
            $vars['content'] = $output;             
    }
}

Answer 1

If you just want the link you can simply do:

$parent_menu_link = menu_link_load($plid);
$parent = l($parent_menu_link['title'], $parent_menu_link['href'], $parent_menu_link['localized_options']);

$output .= '<section>' . $parent . $vars['elements'][$key]['#children'] . '</section>';

Cheers,