While I Waited

The Storm

I walked west on through the evening and into the night, stopping for a brief nap about three hours before dawn.  In the desert, it was better to travel during the cool hours and take the long sleep during the heat of the day.  Of course, in the dark the sand color was more difficult to discern, so I had to proceed with that slow slide-shuffle.  No need for sweetwater yet.

Dawn came, and I followed my long shadow across the endless sand.  I was grateful for the challenge of my gait, which kept my mind from drifting too much.  I kept my eyes on my shadow, and when it shrank to just a rim of darkness, I paused to check for any good cover for rest.

"Tozpit," I muttered.  The southern horizon was black with towering clouds.  I had to squint to face them; the southern gale pelted me with sand.  

Cursing my inattention, I faced west again and abandoned the slide-shuffle in favor of a moderate jog.  There would be no escaping the storm, but with any luck, I avoid the full center.

Ten minutes passed, and I began to sweat.  That meant the humid stormwall was closing.  Another five minutes, and I passed an invisible border of sand textures.  I felt the sand churning under each footfall as Leevers emerged and gave chase.  They weren't particularly fast, but it meant I couldn't stop running until I reached safe sand again.  Most of my mind was preoccupied with controlling my pace and breathing, but in a small corner I offered a prayer of gratitude for Impa's unyielding training.

Another ten minutes passed, and the wind changed from a steady, strong, southernly to random gusts that threw sand like colored powder at Festival.  I found myself stumbling with it like a drunk.  It was time to hunker down.

A glance over my shoulder and a nerve-racking halt told me the Leevers had given up.  Either I had passed to safe sand again, or they were tunneling toward the more palatable storm center.  

I tried to look for natural cover, but the air was now brown with sand, like a fog, and looking into it risked damage to my eyes.  

Keeping my head down, I grabbed the shield off my back.  The design was distinctly Gerudo:  one edge was rounded, and bordered by a squishy substance apparently produced from the pressed leaves of a rubber plant.  The front bore bronze leafwork and a dimple in the center, which used to hold a sapphire before I had to buy my own horse.  The back had the usual reinforcing steel crossbraces, but the grips were longer and their joints more intricate.  The most unique feature, though, was the edge closest to the user's fist, which tapered off to a sharp point of gleaming steel.

In Hyrule, we were taught the Gerudo used these shields as a street thug might use iron knuckles.  We were taught the desert people were so violent, so barbaric, that even their defense equipment was designed to kill.

A Gerudo would've howled with laughter.

I pinched special clasps on the joints to release the grips.  One steel beam screwed into the other, and the last screwed into a reinforced bulge on the shield's rounded edge.  In no more than a minute, I was stomping the sharp edge into the sand and shoveling out my own sand burrow.

It was hard work, made harder by the ever-changing gusts, but the blood rushing in my ears and the wind's howling kept other noises at bay.  Finally, I created a hole large enough for me to curl up, cat-like, and escape the wind.  

Hopping down in my hole, I readied a small flask that hung from my waist.  I'd covered my nose a while back, but even so, I gagged when I unscrewed the lid.  Chu jelly could clear a town a mile off, and black Chus even cleared out their foul-smelling cousins.  But the use was well worth the stink.

I took the brush attached to the bottle and painted stripes on the downwind side of my burrow.  After a pause, a futile attempt to pack up the other sides against the wind, I painted them in a similar fashion.  Then I took out my mirror and waved it about.

Nothing happened.  The storm was well on me now, and the air was so thick with dust no light came through.  I fumbled with the mirror for another precious minute as my sand burrow dissolved around me.  I needed light; without it, the jelly wouldn't set and I would die out here in the Swallowing Sands, and Zoral would wait for no one...

But the thought of Zoral made me shove the mirror back in my pocket.  The Gerudo was right:  for a woman blessed by Nayru, I could be incredibly stupid.

I closed my eyes, held my breath, and held out my hand.  

Unfortunately, the motions weren't enough:  light had to be summoned; it needed a promise of company.

I needed to find the light within me.

I tried to do it how I learned, back in the castle with my tutors.  It was so easy back then - all the halls were gilded and all the faces glowed.  

But in my mind's eye, all I could see of the castle was a raging fire, somehow dark even in its crimson fury.

The wind whipped at my hair, and I felt the sand begin to pile up over my shoes.

No, thoughts of Hyrule never worked anymore, but in five years I'd come up with a decent substitute.  It was Impa who demanded it, and Impa was its source:  her proud loyalty, shining strong and true, so like the Gerudo ideal of light.  Nothing was hidden in Impa's presence, and with Impa, the path was clear.

I felt a something like a weight in my hand, though I still felt nothing to touch.  The inside of my eyelids glowed red.

Too briefly.

For the first time, thoughts of Impa brought with them doubt, worry, and fear, taking me back five years to one night, that fateful night that made me afraid of the dark and thunder and fire.  That made me afraid of a man on a black horse.  That made me afraid of myself.

The wind whipped at my hair, and suddenly I was the frightened princess again, clinging to her bodyguard as they galloped away from everything I knew and loved.

I remembered galloping through the streets, townspeople I loved scattering like ants.  They avoided me only to impale themselves on Gerudo spears.  

I remembered hugging Impa's waist hard as I could, turning my head so one ear pressed into her strong back.  I remembered when we turned on a side street, and I caught my last view of the castle.  One of the spires was gone.

I remembered the sounds of screams, and on top of that, the rhythmic clang of the drawbridge.  I remember the horse hooves pounding across the wood.

When I looked back, I saw him.

The little boy in forest green with blue eyes that seemed to shine even in the storm.  The prophesied hero, who, at my behest, had opened the Sacred Realm to Ganondorf's corruption.

I remembered digging my ocarina from the satchel and tossing it to him.  

I remembered hope.

I felt something warm in my center, and in a rush, the light came.  All it needed was a pinprick, and the magic swelled until the light was so bright even my closed eyes hurt.  I released the magic, and opened them.

The purple lines I had painted around me had turned to stone.  Satisfied that the walls would hold, I held my shield overhead and knelt down, sealing myself in the darkness.  

In the darkness, there was nothing to do but wait, wait and offer prayers to the Goddess Hylia that the little boy with blue eyes was safe somewhere, and that he would have the courage, the grace, to come back someday and fix the world I broke by his hand.