Side A – Nia
Elshira was a problem but not an insurmountable one. Not that Nia had any proof of that. Which was fine. She didn’t need proof. Elshira was not just Yasgrid’s enemy. She was a fundamental wrongness in the world. One that Yasgrid could not ignore or overlook. One which had to be fought. And Nia wasn’t going to let Yasgrid stand along in that fight so Nia believed they could win despite Elshira being older, wiser, better prepared, and more powerful than either or possible even both of them.
Naosha, and Kaylle, would have insisted that believing in something simply because you wanted it to be true would only ever lead to heart break and ruin. Naosha had all but said as much in regards to Nia’s doomed quasi-courtship of Marianne. Despite the fact that Naosha had been correct on that account, Nia felt a cheerful certainty growing inside her that this occasion was different. Back then she’d been looking for love to fix what was broken in herself. That was very different from taking the love she already held and using it to protect the people who’d given it to her.
“We need to get back to our bodies,” Yasgrid said. “There’s work to do and not enough time to do it.”
In her Wren eyes a fire gleamed, and though Yasgrid was the one in a bird’s body it was Nia’s heart that soared.
She didn’t need to convince Yasgrid that the fight wasn’t already lost. The exhausted, broken woman who Nia had found so worn down that she was collapsed even in her own dreams had slept long enough.
“We’ll figure that out,” Nia said. “Or…huh…maybe we don’t need to?”
“I’m pretty sure wrens and squirrels are lacking a few of the tools we’ll need to permanently banish a ghost,” Yasgrid said.
“Oh, no argument there. I’m not built for fighting anything larger than an acorn at the moment and I don’t think these little squirrel hands could knock out much of a rhythm on a Shatter Drum. What they can do though, is work on things that Elshira will never notice.”
“What kind of things are you thinking of?” Yasgrid asked, warming to the idea with each syllable she spoke.
“Marianne showed me some mythril wire. Thinner than a hair and all but unbreakable. Nasty stuff to string across a door frame at neck level,” Nia said. “Of course, that might not make Elshira any deader than she is.”
“Unfortunately, it probably wouldn’t,” Yasgrid said. “I’m not sure the body she’s wearing now is her original one. It’s too different from the one I saw her in.”
“Which could be an illusion,” Nia said. “In either direction, or both. Of course with that much magic, all sorts of unpleasant options are available to her, so probably not a path which merits too much thought.”
“True, what she could possibly be capable of is likely far wider than what she can actually do,” Yasgrid said. “Which gives me an idea for a path we can pursue, even if we stay trapped in these forms.”
“I was thinking we would make the perfect spies and messengers,” Nia said. “I know we can’t speak but my Mother, Kayelle, and Marianne are all smart enough that we could explain things via at least a dozen different methods. You had a different idea though, didn’t you?”
“I did, though I like yours too,” Yasgrid said. “I was thinking that if we can pass unnoticed this close to her, we could experiment on Elshira. Arrange all sorts of annoying misfortunes and learn from how she deals with them what capabilities she definitely does possess and which ones she likely doesn’t”
Nia liked that idea but before she could say so, someone, or rather something, else spoke.
“A squirrel and a wren, huddled so close together as to give the impression they could understand one another despite being nought but mindless beasts, if mindless beasts they are?” said the Trouble which unfurled from the tree truck beside them.
Side B – Yasgrid
Yasgrid froze despite millenia old instincts telling her reach for the sky with her wings as fast as she could.
“And is that anger I smell? And fear?” the Trouble chittered.
It wasn’t a rat. Despite the whip-like tail and the dark beady eyes, it wasn’t a rat.
It didn’t even really look like one. Too much was wrong with its proportions and too many bits of it were torn and leaking. It wasn’t a living thing at all but a mockery of life, and it looked gleeful at the prospect of making two living things into the same sort of mockery it was.
“The fear is expected of course, but it’s fading away so quickly,” the Trouble said, swinging down below the branch Yasgrid and Ni were standing on before rising beyond them and beginning to stalk closer. “The anger though? It grows. Oh how it grows. How could such little hearts hold so much?”
Yasgrid drew back to launch herself against the Trouble. All she needed to do was distract it for a fraction of a second and Nia could escape.
Except of course Nia had no interest in escaping.
The moment Yasgrid moved at all, Nia leapt forward with a chittering battle cry.
Squirrel teeth flew at the Trouble’s mangled face but it was feint and Nia instead threw herself low, smashing into the Trouble’s feet and sending it flailing off the branch.
“Go!” Nia said. “We gotta leave!” Squirrel leg muscles propelled her off the branch and to the next tree before the Trouble hit the ground.
That was the good news.
The bad news was that the fall did no damage to the Trouble at all and it recovered the instant it hit the ground, dashing back up the tree truck to where Yasgrid was still perched.
If it thought it was going to catch her, it was deeply mistaken, and would have dearly regretted any success it might have had in that endeavor.
When it reached the branch they’d been on it didn’t leap for her though despite the fact that she stayed close enough to the tree that it could have. Instead it mimicked Nia’s leap and gave pursuit to the fleeing squirrel.
“We have to do more than escape this thing,” Nia said, racing from tree to tree away from Elshira’s encampment as fast as her squirrely legs could take her. “It knows we’re something special. We can’t let it report to Elshira.”
Yasgrid knew that, but was resisting the obvious implication of what she needed to do, hoping for some better answer to appear.
Which was when King showed up.