Side A – Nia
Hearing Yasgrid declare her intent to stay in the Darkwood left a strange feeling cycling in and out of Nia with each breath.
Yasgrid wasn’t going back to Frost Harbor.
Or to any of the Stoneling’s lands.
She was going to stay in the Darkwood. Because she was the Bearer. Because the Darkwood is where her new life was. Because she belonged there.
Which meant Nia could stay with the Stonelings.
It wasn’t all a pantomime that was going to be exposed and ended.
They’d talked about that, on the first night, when they’d been unsure if just falling asleep would cause them to wake from the strange dream they were having. Each admitted that they hoped it wouldn’t. Each wanted to stay where they’d been tossed.
That had been weeks ago though. When the newness and wonder of pretending to be someone else had been too amazing to even think of letting slip away.
Some inner gaze of Nia’s had been looking back all those weeks. Watching the trail she left behind for any missteps she made. She’d had the idea that she was going to stay with the Stonelings but the idea had always felt precarious. One wrong word or one unexpected failing and she’d be kicked out of Yasgrid’s life and back into her own.
A vista of a different future played out for her as she looked at Osdora, and Prash, and, almost painfully, Margrada.
They were going to be her life.
She bit back tears as her heart ached for that idea to be true.
She and Margrada wouldn’t have to rush. They wouldn’t be dramatic heroines, cast apart by the cruel whims of fate, until heroic effort reunited them.
They could just be. Together.
They could play and they could learn and they could share a life together.
A picture of the two of them, five years in the future, doing the most boring of domestic activities hit Nia between the eyes, desire slamming into her like a hammer blow.
“You don’t mean that though, do you?” Osdora asked and for a moment Nia felt a surge of terror pass through her that Yasgrid might recant her position.
“I do,” Yasgrid said. “But that doesn’t mean we won’t see each other again. Or that I’m leaving you forever.”
Osdora was silent for a moment, puzzlement playing over her face as she tried to follow her daughter’s words to a sensible meaning.
“You mean like this?” she asked at last. “This is how we’ll see each other from now on?”
“I don’t think this needs to be the only time we communicate like this,” Yasgrid said. “But I meant we can meet in a more mundane form too.”
“In person?” Osdora asked. “How? You’re too far away aren’t you? There aren’t even roads that exist between this place and our home.”
“Someone has to walk the path before a road can be made,” Yasgrid said. “And, one way or another, I’m guessing that person’s going to me.”
Side B – Yasgrid
Yasgrid felt a stirring from Endings and was pleased to see that the blade seemed to agree with her.
“It’s too far though,” Osdora said. “You’re so small now. How could you face the dangers of that long a journey?”
Yasgrid smiled, a warm satisfaction spreading through her chest. She didn’t need to exaggerate or make false claims to get her mother to believe her. She didn’t even need her mother’s belief.
“I am stronger now than I used to be,” she said. “The dangers on a voyage like that will be in danger from me.”
Endings gave a mental nod of agreement. The Bearer would come to no harm. Or, rather, this Bearer would come to no harm. Few of its previous Bearers understood it as well its current holders. They weren’t invincible, but their faith in Endings made their union with the blade stronger.
And Endings liked Yasgrid.
She made interesting uses of the power she’d been given. Endings wanted to see more of that.
“Won’t that strength hold you to the Darkwood though?” Nia asked. “Endings isn’t free after all. It comes with a burden.”
“It does,” Yasgrid agreed. “And thanks to Kayelle, that burden is broad and expansive enough to cover even something like a trip to Frost Harbor. After all she did pledge to rid the Darkwood of all its Troubles and there’s a Trouble lingering in Frost Harbor isn’t there?”
Nia blinked for a moment, the rhythm of the song carrying her hands on without any conscious effort on her part before she understood what Yasgrid was saying.
“Oh! The one I took from you!” Nia said. “Huh, yeah, I sort of lost track of that one.”
“What’s a ‘Trouble’?” Margrada asked.
“Complicated to explain,” Nia said. “The short form is, they’re dangerous supernatural remnants of a problem someone was unable to resolve or abandon.”
“And you have one?” Prash asked. “Or, you lost one?”
“Like I said, that part’s complicated. What I took from Yasgrid wasn’t a full Trouble. More like a fragment of one.”
“It’s heart,” Yasgrid said.
“A heart with all of the pain, and rage, and torment cut away from it. It was sleeping and then I, uh, woke it up,” Nia said.
“Why?” Margrada asked. “Wasn’t that dangerous?”
“Probably?” Nia said. “I was a little, let’s say disturbed at that point though, and bringing some specific people some trouble seemed like a wonderful idea.”
“When was…oh!” Margrada said.
“That’s how you walked through the Battle of the Bands like you did,” Osdora said.
“More or less, yeah,” Nia said. “So I don’t think I can manage something like that again. And it’s probably questionable if I should have done it like that in the first place.”
“Why did you?” Prash asked.
“My body was broken and useless and they were killing Margrada. So I took what options I had.”
“How much power do these Troubles have?” Prash asked.
“That one had as much as two whole Shatter Bands,” Osdora said.
“And it was on its way to becoming something more,” Yasgrid said. “Just like all the rest that I’m carrying are.”