While I Waited

Endurance

"Louder!" Impa shouted from ahead.  She was always ahead, with those Gerudo-sized legs of hers...

I sucked in a gargantuan breath and bellowed out the verse, accents falling in time with the pounding of my feet on the rock of the gorge.  

     "Red for blood and red for eyes

     Red for truth found in the lies

     Eyes for care and eyes for tears

     Eyes for guarding through the years

     Tears for blood and tears for care

     Tears for secrets we must bear

     Secret truths that we must guard

     Secret truths that -"

But I couldn't finish, I had to inhale, and I did so forcefully I sucked in a mouthful of Impa's dust trail.  My jog turned into a stumble as I broke into a fit of coughing.  

Then I felt something smack at the bottom of my raised foot, almost sending me to the ground.  "Your race is not over!"

She kicked at my other foot, and I let myself collapse.  Or would've.  Impa caught me by my braid, wrenching my neck back as my knees fell toward rock.  But she wouldn't let me have even that comfort - in an instant, boots stamped down on my back heels, locking my feet in place, and a hand slammed between my shoulder blades, sending me careening forward until my braid went taught again.  "Plank," Impa barked, and years of training, more than conscious decision, made me flex my core, setting my heels, hips, and shoulders in a neat, slanted line.

"What was your mistake?" Impa demanded.

"I didn't take a big enough -"  My breath was knocked out of me by a fist to my left kidney.

"What was your mistake?"

"I breathed too -"

"What was your mistake?"

"I don't know!"  I yelled.  

Impa let silence hang between us for a moment.  I imagined how we looked, a tall woman with white hair standing straight, her ward straight as a board, too, but at a crazy angle with the ground.  

"What did I tell you?"

I fought through the pain, back to the moment the pain began.  "'Your race is not over,'" I quoted through gritted teeth.  "I should've kept going."

"Close," Impa said, jerking my braid so I came vertical again.  "Close," she whispered in my ear, with a knife to my throat.  

In a burst of energy, I seized the knife and bent over double, throwing Impa over my shoulder.  My bodyguard hardly hit the ground before I was running again.  

But she soon caught up, edging ahead so I could see a tiny nod.  "The one rule of endurance?"

"I keep going," I answered by rote.  Then I sucked in a breath, and began the song once more.

___

Bravado notwithstanding, this band of devotees could not garner an immediate audience with Koume.  The gate guard actually laughed at the prospect.  "What would the Twinrova want with this wretch?"

I seethed, even as another dribble of drool came from my lips.  

"You know nothing!"  the captain said.  "If the iron affects here this way, she must have magical blood."