This won't be easy, in the way taking a walk or a leisurely swim is easy. It's going to be rough, on joints, on muscle and bone, and she can feel her heart and breathing rates starting to pick up, twenty steps in.
Easy isn't the word for it, but maybe simple is. There's so much in the world not to trust. Emotions, treaties, truces. The weather. The ocean, for all she loves and respects it -- you start trusting the water, and you could wind up dead without any warning at all.
But she can trust her own body. Knows what she can ask of it, what it will give her, before complaint, before pain, before exhaustion, and then past all of those checkpoints, into the perfect knowledge that she can go where she needs to, do what needs to be done.
And right now, what needs to be done is to climb.
The steps are low, flat, and she has to watch her step. It would be easy to turn an ankle, or snap one, if she stumbled or hit the wrong angle, and the steps are too long for her to take each one comfortably in stride. Steve probably could, can, but she's not thinking about Steve, right now. She's thinking about the impact of shoes against wood and gravel and dirt, about the swing of her arms. About momentum, and using it to her best advantage. Leaning into it, using her weight to propel herself uphill.
Until a burn starts, low, in her calves and hamstrings, starts singing along muscle groups, as breath comes harder, with a beginning rhythm, huffing in and out every two steps. A trickle of sweat starting to tickle its way down her spine, as they head up, out, moving well, if not sprinting.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-27 02:11 am (UTC)Easy isn't the word for it, but maybe simple is. There's so much in the world not to trust. Emotions, treaties, truces. The weather. The ocean, for all she loves and respects it -- you start trusting the water, and you could wind up dead without any warning at all.
But she can trust her own body. Knows what she can ask of it, what it will give her, before complaint, before pain, before exhaustion, and then past all of those checkpoints, into the perfect knowledge that she can go where she needs to, do what needs to be done.
And right now, what needs to be done is to climb.
The steps are low, flat, and she has to watch her step. It would be easy to turn an ankle, or snap one, if she stumbled or hit the wrong angle, and the steps are too long for her to take each one comfortably in stride. Steve probably could, can, but she's not thinking about Steve, right now. She's thinking about the impact of shoes against wood and gravel and dirt, about the swing of her arms. About momentum, and using it to her best advantage. Leaning into it, using her weight to propel herself uphill.
Until a burn starts, low, in her calves and hamstrings, starts singing along muscle groups, as breath comes harder, with a beginning rhythm, huffing in and out every two steps. A trickle of sweat starting to tickle its way down her spine, as they head up, out, moving well, if not sprinting.