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But it doesn’t happen. When I reach the rock wall, she’s already climbing. She must have run the whole way. With her tight pants, I can see the muscles in her thighs as she pushes her weight up the rock.
Smart,I think. She’s no beginner. She knows not to pull herself up, instead relying on her legs.
“Excuse me.” I step aside for another competitor and realize that I’ve been wasting time staring at Iara. He follows my gaze. “Nice… assets.”
I side-eye his cocky grin.
“Whatever,” I say and start climbing.
I know I shouldn’t, but something in me takes over and I climb as fast as I can. I’m not really risking anything as this part isn’t tough. I don’t even need the inside claw on my foot for security.
“Coming up on your left.”
Iara looks down at me. Actually, more like glares at me. Then she smiles, and I realize she was faking. “About time you caught up.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No.” She starts climbing faster.
“You can’t beat me at climbing.”
“Oh, no?”
It should be obvious. I’m way bigger and stronger than her. She keeps moving. I pop out my claws just for some extra security – I am not getting a competition-ending injury the first day – and quickly overtake her.
“You need your claws for this tiny rock?”
I grind my teeth and continue upward, ignoring her. At the top, I stop to sit down and take an energy bar out of my pack.
Now you’re being really stupid,I tell myself. I am not the least bit hungry and, in a week, or two, I might have wished Isaved it. But I want the first thing Iara sees when she makes it over the top is me sitting on my ass, relaxing.
She pulls herself over the edge with a grunt. She flops down on her butt and swipes her hair out of her eyes. I see her eyeing my snack, and I take a bite, pretending it’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted.
The truth is that it’s like chewing wood. Another reason I should have waited. It would taste much better if I was famished.
I stretch my legs out, flopping my feet apart. She checks out my claws.
“I figure we’re kind of evenly matched. My claws versus your tiny body. I climb better, but I guess you must never need to stop and eat.”
“Well, I’m certainly not hungry enough to eat one of those yet. They taste like sawdust.”
“Do you eat a lot of sawdust in… Wait, where are you from again?”
“Tlisan.”
“Right. Is sawdust a delicacy there?”
“Goodbye.”
She turns and takes off in a huff.I got under her skin with that one,I think, grinning.
I carefully wrap the rest of the bar up and put it back in my pack. I get up, vowing to keep an eye on the trail for anything edible I can chew on to kill the horrible taste in my mouth.
I find two small goodies. I’ve heard humans refer to them as mint and lemongrass, which I assume is what they most closely resemble from Earth.
I pick large sprigs of both and store them in my pocket. I suck on the lemon one first. If I catch up to Iara – ha, I mean when – I’ll offer her a leaf. No, I’ll offer to trade her a leaf for a petal. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.
But when I catch up to her, she’s not alone. She’s with a female Kiphian. I kind of remember her from some of the pre-race events. But her name escapes me. Ekria? Eliphia? Whoever she is, for some reason she seems to have emptied her entire pack out on the ground.
