Side A – Nia
Nia wondered what Dr. Prash could be possibly expect to find by looking at the back of her throat. Whatever it was, she was happy to see what it didn’t seem to alarm him after he pulled back.
“Your hands next please,” he said with the unhurried air of someone who had nowhere else to be and is in no rush to complete their task.
Nia wondered about that. Osdora had to have grabbed him in the middle of doing something. Right? It wasn’t like Prash was sitting in a cart staring blankly at a wall and waiting to be called to tend to her?
“Sorry to take up your time like this,” Nia said, picturing Osdora dragging Prash away from a party with the Roadies.
Prash’s professional demeanor was unshakable though.
“Don’t be,” he said. “I enjoy seeing my patients recover.”
He took her hands and began carefully inspecting them, starting with the nails on each hand and working down each finger with care and precision.
Nia expected pain to blossom at his touch, but she felt no more than few dull aches.
“And recovering well,” Prash said. “We have more tests to go, but I can give you the good news that we won’t have to rebreak any of your fingers. It looks like they’ve set quite nicely.”
Nia had forgotten that treatment for her hands might include mashing them again.
“I want you to follow my finger with your eyes now,” Dr. Prash said. “Don’t move your head, just track it with your eyes and tell me when you lose sight of it.”
The first tests Dr Prash had run were all simple, painless, and non-invasive. Nia was glad for that but wondered when the unpleasant ones would start.
Elven medicine was gentle and slow in most cases, but for serious and immediate issues there were procedures and surgeries which were conducted only in remote and soundproof locations. It didn’t seem like Prash had those in mind, perhaps Stonelings handled things differently, but Nia was sure her luck wasn’t that good.
“Her injuries are healing up nicely,” Dr. Prash announced, leaning back against one of the support poles of Osdora’s tent. “Faster than natural, but that’s thanks to the treatments she’d been receiving.”
“No signs of Shatter Drum healing?” Osdora asked.
“None that I can see,” Prash said. “It’s possible there could be some very subtle effects, an amplification of the medications, but…”
“But that’s not how Shatter Drums work,” Osdora said. “Not in the hands of a novice at least.”
Nia started to ask what they meant but was too busy turning ideas over in her head to form the words.
What were they working for? What did they think she’d done?
“Our plan had been to wait for this,” Osdora said, turning to face Nia. “Well, their plan. They had some good arguments so I was willing to go along with it.”
“Who’s they?” Nia asked.
“The senior drummers in the band,” Margrada said.
“They wanted to make sure you were fully healed before you touched a drum again,” Osdora said. “I think under the circumstances though, we need to know what happened to you sooner than later.”
Nia looked at the drum in Osdora’s hands and tried to imagine what kind of song Osdora would play to knock the truth from Nia’s lips.
Instead, Osdora held out the drum as an offering.
“The important question though is what do you think?” Osdora asked. “Are you ready to play again?”
Side B – Yasgrid
Yasgrid saw that Denar wasn’t going to come to her even before the boy himself was aware of the decision. It was the little move forward and the deeper drawing back. His feet knew where he wanted to be even while his expression shifted through various stages of hope, confusions, and determination.
“I’m going to stay with you,” he said, managing to mostly make it a declaration of intent rather than a request for permission.
“You may do that as well,” Ilia said.
“Can we leave then?” Denar asked.
“No!” Kyra said. “Denar, you can’t go with her. You don’t know what she is!”
“Nor do you,” Ilia said.
“You’re an abomination,” Kyra said. “One that should have been ended long ago.”
Ilia smiled at the description, her eyes narrowing in hidden delight.
“I am that,” she said. “But not only that, and whatever I am, I can offer Denar far more than you or the Bearer ever could.”
“Corruption, madness, and death,” Kyra said. “He doesn’t need any of those things.”
With the fury behind Kyra’s words, Yasgrid was surprised Kyra was spending any time at all arguing with Ilia.
Something was holding her back. She knew more about what Ilia was than she was saying. Though, as Ilia said, probably not everything.
Just enough to be afraid of her.
Like Endings was?
That didn’t make sense, but Yasgrid felt the blade’s insistence gnawing at her with the same fear driven rage she heard in Kyra’s voice.
There was a history between Endings and Ilia. Yasgrid could feel it clearly and the moment they weren’t balanced on a knife’s edge, she was going to explorer the issue further.
Before that though, she needed to play the last card at her disposal. The one chance she could still see to make things turn out well for all involved.
“Let us come with you as well then,” Yasgrid said, seeing that her connection and soft promises to Denar weren’t going to be enough to sway the boy.
“No!” Kyra said. “She can’t leave here. We have to stop her.”
“I’m afraid the Fate Dancer is correct that where we travel, you cannot follow,” Ilia said. “As for the rest?” Ilia grasped Denar’s offered hand and the two of them began to fall apart as one dead leaf after another fluttered away from the illusion of their presence. “What makes you think we were ever here at all?”