Waking of Saturday, July 28, 2018 ~ 8
I continued talking with everyone I
could around Gerudo Town, looking for more days to save, until I came to one
gateway guard who mentioned the Sand Seal
Races. She told me where they normally took place, and said that, now that
the Divine Beast was gone, they could race again.
Oh
could they now?
I ran out in the indicated
direction, just to a little hill in the sand with some palm trees. I could see
no discernible racing track, but near
an ancient Sheikah dais I found two Gerudo vai just kind of standing around.
One of them had shaded goggles over
her eyes, and the reddest fro I had ever seen.
This was the legendary sand seal
racer Tali, and beside her was her elderly trainer, Shabonne.
When I spoke to them it was
Shabonne who answered—she blew and blustered on about how sand seal racing was
a fast-paced, hardcore sport, and how difficult it was, and that a little vai
like me couldn’t really hope to be any good at it, especially against somebody
like Tali, who was their most
celebrated racing champion, and who held all the records, and who was generally
the best of the best and why the heck
didn’t I just fall down and start worshipping her right now. Dang.
Tali just said, “...”
XD
But I pressed, and for twenty
rupees there was an option to race! I wondered how it would go.... Would there
be multiple other racers? Would it be just me and Tali? Would we have to jockey
for position?
But it turned out that I alone had
only to race against Tali’s winning time.
Well that wouldn’t be so bad. :)
A minute and a half to beat....
But
where was the course? Would it be marked? How would I know which way to go?
Perhaps it wasn’t quite like me, to
go rushing into something so fast, but before I knew it the screen faded out
and I had set the sequence in motion: I stood poised on my shield behind a tame
sand seal, all hitched up and ready to go. The timer was counting down—
Ah,
I could see it now.... Those were
gates!
In front of me, two tall posts were
bowed toward each other, tied at the top with ropes and flags to make a shape
like a Gothic arch. Similar sets of posts marched off into the dunes in the
distance and beyond obstacles....
I
could do this! :D
And the timer wound down and I was off.
I don’t remember what distracted me
from making my seal dash right off
the start.... Maybe just the novelty of the experience. Through the gate,
darting ahead between a mess of rocks, down through a narrow little sink where
the boulders rolled around—and the music!
What a happy, flutey little jig was the music! ^_^ Made all the more charmingly
amusing by the fact that as my sand seal put out bursts of speed it seemed to snorfle along right in time to the beat.
XD
There was a cool stretch that
curved right underneath a giant ribcage that bent round a large rock—and then
it was straight through a Lizalfos camp?
What the heck??— But there was the next gate just beyond the three
skull-dens—I urged my sand seal onward....!
And I burst through a drop with my sand seal leaping through the air like
a salmon and the finish line sounded and I had completed the race in a minute
and seventeen seconds! I beat the record! ^_^
The sequence brought me right back
to the little sand hill, where several Gerudo had turned out to watch me race.
Tali finally spoke up and offered me a gracious congratulations, and the crowd
all cheered as I was awarded the trophy they had handed down through the years—a Sheikah orb.
Well I knew just where to put that!
I set it down in the glowing orange
dais and the Raqa Zunzo Shrine
rumbled up out of the earth.
Cool.
Once I had collected the Spirit
Orb, I spoke to Shabonne once again.
She was pretty wound up that I had
beaten her champion. And she challenged me to another go, this time with a
little wager.... If I could beat the
time I had just set, she would give me three
hundred rupees.
But I had to put up a hundred
rupees of my own to start.
Well,
considering my sloppy start the previous time....
It was a deal.
And I did the race in a minute
sixteen this time! The extra rupees were most welcome—I had been a little low
on cash.
Shabonne conceded that I had some
skill, then. And Tali opened up a bit as well. She spoke about the trophy, and told me that, though it had
been awarded to her before, she was
never really sure she would be the one to awaken the shrine I think that’s what she said or something like it.
Had
each winner been attempting to summon the shrine?
But there was something about me, she said, that she felt was
different. When she looked at me. And I had been the one to awaken the shrine.
Wait
just how Chosen was I, if the Sheikah
relics were reacting only to me?
That was something new to think
about....
I went back to town and visited the
guards again.
Barta was still down in Dragon’s
Exile.
Did
I want to do that tonight? It’d been a long day....
And then one of them shared with me
the rumor that THERE WAS A FAIRY AT THE LEVIATHAN SKELETON SOUTHWEST OF TOWN.
OH for—
. . . .
No, this day was too long.
I went to just stay at the inn.
Romah’s inn. The Hotel Oasis.
Standard,
please, I said, not the spa plan—and handed over twenty rupees.
Besides if they spa me they might
find out I’m a man.
It was 4:05 in the morning, game
time, and I’d seen two Blood Moons in this town, consecutively.
I asked the innkeep to wake me at
noon.
“Sav’orr” she bade me as I went to
bed.
Good
night.
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