Side A – Yasgrid
Yasgrid found Nia’s claim that the tugging on her heart was some sort of mystical connection to Kyra a little hard to buy.
They’d known each other for no more than a few days? Was it only that? Or was it even that long? Despite being asleep, she couldn’t feel or remember much besides her fatigue.
Which seemed terribly unfair. What more did her body want her to do? She’d already collapsed. She couldn’t rest any harder than she already was. Her mind spun off on scattered thoughts from there for a moment before she caught herself and dragged her attention back to what Nia was saying.
“I know there are some difficulties to overcome before you’ll be able to talk to her in person, but I think if you hold onto that as your goal, and accept that she wants to talk too, well, maybe you won’t wind up like this again.” Nia gestured to Yasgrid’s collapsed form.
“Sure. That makes sense,” Yasgrid said, agreement about all she could muster.
“Yeah, sense. But that’s not what you need is it?” Nia said. “This isn’t about what you think is reasonable.”
“No. Reasonable is good. I need to be reasonable to beat Elshira,” Yasgrid said, wondering as she said the words what made her think she was going to come out on top in game of wits with an actual genius.
“Do you?” Nia asked.
“Do I what?” Yasgrid noticed that Nia was tapping her fingers on the ground as they spoke. She’d mistaken it for a nervous tick at first, but she’d trained too long to be a Shatter drummer to miss the familiar rhythmic patterns of a simple grounding song.
“Do you need to be reasonable to beat Elshira? Wouldn’t acting in a completely unreasonable manner be more likely to disrupt her plans? For that matter, do you even need to beat her at all?” Nia asked.
“She’s an undead sorceress who’s targeting several different people I care about,” Yasgrid said. She wasn’t annoyed at the question, only puzzled at where Nia’s thoughts were trending.
“And none of that is good. But you do have options,” Nia said, continuing her tapping, which Yasgrid noticed was doing more than vibrating the forest floor. With each light strike of Nia’s fingers, small ripples of magic flowed outwards through the dreamscape and rose up into Yasgrid’s battered feet.
The music didn’t transfix or transform Yasgrid. It was a simple rhythm. One she’d heard hundreds of times before. One she’d probably played hundreds of times before. It didn’t change her world, but it did touch her, flowing along well worn channels to gently fill parts of her soul Yasgrid hadn’t guessed were aching.
“What kind of options?” she asked, taking a breath that didn’t feel like it was crushed under a landslide of fatigue.
“Elshira is focused on you right? That would be the perfect time for someone else to take her out. Or maybe she doesn’t need to be fought at all. She controls Troubles? That’s so terrible. You’re the Bearer. She sent a literal army of Troubles after you and how did that turn out? Oh, right, you and Kayelle carved them to pieces.”
“And the Fate Dancers,” Yasgrid said. “We can’t forget about them.”
Side B – Nia
The Fate Dancers had never been more than a distant and unimportant thought in Nia’s world. Everyone knew about them, and everyone knew that they were…weird was probably the most gentle word she could find.
As a closed sect whose members were noticeably more violent than the rest of the population and who had all sorts of rules and hang ups that ‘normal people’ didn’t, Nia hadn’t ever found the Fate Dancers to be anything more than off-putting.
They dedicated themselves to ‘fighting the Troubles of the Darkwood’ when no one had ever asked them to and they weren’t actually capable of getting the job done. More than once she’d heard them described as people who were simply jealous of the Bearer and spent their time trying to pretending they could do what Endings did.
Reviewing what Yasgrid had been through had left her questioning a lot of those early biases though.
The Fate Dancers couldn’t do what Endings did. That was true. But it was also clear that they had no interest in trying be pretend-Bearers. They had their own traditions and their own crafts. There were reasons for the things they did, and for why they lived (mostly) apart from the rest of Elven society.
“Maybe you forgetting them would be a good idea,” Nia said.
Yasgrid shook her head, blinked her eyes and refocused on Nia.
“The rest of the Fate Dancers. For now,” Nia amended. “Kyra’s a special case.”
“She and the Fate Dancers are pretty connected,” Yasgrid said. “I don’t think I can pick and choose which I want to keep and which I leave behind.”
“You choose Kyra,” Nia said. “She’s clearly choosing you if she’s calling out to you. Whether that means you ever need to see another Fate Dancer again is something you can work out later. With her help. She knows them, so she can offer you a clearer picture on what’s going on there.”
“That might be a painful subject for her,” Yasgrid said.
“Oh I’m sure it will be,” Nia said. “That’s not your fault though. Whatever messed up dynamics they have, that’s entirely of their own making. If she choose to go against their rules for your sake, that’s because she believed they were wrong. Don’t diminish the strength she showed in making that choice.”
A short, choked laugh escaped Yasgrid’s throat.
“I’m really not worth her, am I?” she said after a moment’s reflection. “I was never as brave at standing up to the people in my life as she was. I had to escape to another land entirely before I could even start being myself.”
“Do you think she would only love you for your bravery?” Nia asked.
“I don’t know if she loves me at all,” Yasgrid said. “Maybe she’s just in pain. Maybe Elshira’s torturing her and forcing her to think of me.”
“If she’s thinking of you when she’s in pain, if she’s calling out your name in her heart, it’s because you’re the one she believes in. You’re the one she trusts to stand with her and give her the strength to carry on. It means she’s brave enough to hold onto you, despite everything it will mean. Are you capable of doing any less?”