Side A – Yasgrid
The howl of the mountain gales rang not only in Yasgrid’s ears but in her soul. She’d never fit into her old life, but standing at the world’s peak held a precious magic all its own, even if it was only within a dream.
“Why?” Kyra asked. “Why are you hunting me?”
Yasgrid drew in a long, slow breath. So many answers she could give to that question were wrong. So many were too heavy for the moment which hung between them.
“Because I shouldn’t have left you in the first place,” she said, picking the most elemental truth she had.
“That’s…but I told you to go,” Kyra said.
Yasgrid nodded.
“You wanted to save me,” she said. “If I’d stayed though we could have saved each other.”
Kyra choked out a laugh.
“Not from my people,” she said. “They were not in an understanding mood.”
Yasgrid nodded again, an acknowledging smile gracing her lips.
With another fortifying breath, she turned to take in the vastness around her. After months in the Darkwood, she’d forgotten what it was like to have a horizon that seemed to go on forever.
“This is where I was born,” Yasgrid said. It wasn’t wise to share that. It would leave Kyra with so many more questions. Ones Yasgrid couldn’t begin to answer yet. And it would give Elshira an avenue to discovering who Yasgrid really was.
There was no reason for Yasgrid to share her secrets with Kyra.
Or rather there was only reason and it was the answer to the whisper Yasgrid could hear within Kyra’s heart.
“How?” Kyra asked, unable to follow where Yasgrid was leading.
But that was okay. Yasgrid didn’t need to share information with Kyra. She need to share something more.
“I didn’t carry many things from here,” Yasgrid said. “So much of what I had wasn’t mine. So much of it I was just holding onto for her I think.” She nodded over towards Nia who sat at the edge of the mountain tapping her feet and fingers. “There is one piece of my old birthright that remains inside me though.”
She turned back to Kyra, meeting her gaze and opening herself as much as she knew how. She needed Kyra to hear the words she couldn’t speak yet and she needed what she said next to be graven into the gods-be-damned heart of the world.
“I am a child of the stones no more but I still know their weight. I can feel the years which have passed them by and left them unbowed. Their strength preserves through sun and storm, through fire and flood and yet these mountains will be ground to dust before I ever again allow someone’s ire to keep me from standing beside those I believe in.”
Side B – Nia
Nia felt her dream shifting under her as Yasgrid spoke words which tread on the borders of a Divine Vow. She played with greater force, struggling to keep the lucid moment on the mountain from falling apart into the churning chaos of three inexpertly merged dream stews.
“I didn’t…I couldn’t have asked that of you,” Kyra said.
“You shouldn’t have had to,” Yasgrid said. “And next time, you won’t.”
“I don’t know if there can be a next time,” Kyra said. “You said you’re learning what Elshira is, but there is so much to her that I don’t think can be seen. She’s more than you imagine.”
“That makes all of us,” Nia said. “There are powers in this world that could burn the Darkwoods to ash. I’ve met them. They hate me now.”
“Then we need you here,” Kyra said. “Burning the Darkwood might be our only hope.”
“It’s not,” Yasgrid said. “We’re not going to lose the wood, we’re not going to lose your people, and we will not lose you.”
“I can’t hope for that,” Kyra said. “My fates run into so many places worse than the grave. I am not what I thought I was.”
“That’s also true of all of us,” Nia said. “We’re the failures of who we believed ourselves to be, and the hope for who we might become.”
Kyra shook her head.
“I haven’t fought gods of fire, or learned to walk the Dreaming Roads so well that I can lead others along them,” she said.
“You led me down the Lost Roads,” Yasgrid said. “You cut me down when you thought I’d turned on you and then rewove my fate to save my life when you discovered I hadn’t.”
“Those are all the simple skills of my people,” Kyra said, her shoulders growing tense as she shook her head again. “They weren’t enough to save me.”
“That’s why you need to draw on the other skills you possess,” Nia said. “The ones Elshira doesn’t even consider to be skills.”
“I have no special talents beyond the tricks all Fate Dancers know,” Kyra said.
“Oh that’s definitely not true,” Nia said and gestured for Yasgrid to explain.
“You don’t see yourself as unique, do you?” Yasgrid asked.
“If I am different, it’s not a strength,” Kyra said.
That seemed to break the paralyzing reservations which had held Yasgrid in place.
Without a word, she crossed the distance separating them and took Kyra by the shoulders.
“You came to me when no other Fate Dancer would have, you chose to act on what you knew was right when turning away would have been so much easier, and you paid the cost for your principals so that no one else would have to. Elshira did not capture you because you are weak, and she doesn’t know the peril she is in so long as she holds you.”
Tears welled up at the corners of Kyra’s eyes as the despair which had gripped surfaced in her expression.
“I’m not coming to rescue you. You don’t need me to do that,” Yasgrid said. “I’m going to find you because I need you with me. I need your strength, and your wisdom, and your courage. I need all of you if I’m going to have any hope of ending Elshira for good.”
Kyra blinked, her breaths short and quick as the tangled dreams began to unravel.
Between one blink and the next some dam within her broke and her posture shifted, certainty straightening her back. Despair fell away from her as she locked eyes with Yasgrid.
“You won’t find me till the Summer Solstice,” she said, before closing the arm’s length between them and kissing a shocked Yasgrid full on the mouth. “But don’t stop looking.”