Side A – Nia
By the tenth time she was dumped on her butt, Nia finally noticed that she was accumulated bruises to more than just her ego.
“Okay, that was definitively worse than the last time,” she said, not trying to hide the frustration that wrenched her lips into a scowl.
“I don’t know,” Margrada said. “You looked like you were almost getting it there.”
Nia glared at her.
The first time Margrada had said that, Nia had mistaken it for encouragement. The fifth time, she’d started to wonder if Margrada was seeing things through love-colored glasses. It had taken at least three more falls after that for Nia to hear the teasing clearly.
“Do you need to take a break?” Margrada asked, again with such sickening sweetness that Nia found herself wishing there was a steel cage around them.
“Is that an option?” Nia asked, prepared for what seemed like the inevitable ‘no’.
“Of course it is,” Margrada said. “You can walk away from drumming whenever you like.”
Those were exactly the wrong words for her to have said.
“Sit down. We’re going again,” Nia said, getting back onto her chair without bothering to dust herself. She’d be on the ground again in a moment, so what was the point?
Twenty seconds after she struck the first beat, she got her answer.
There wasn’t a point.
So she got up again. Margrada had just been rising from her chair but paused when Nia wordlessly stabbed a finger in her direction directing her to sit back down.
Their next “battle” lasted twenty five seconds.
And the one after that last fifteen.
“This is stupid. I can’t keep up with you,” she said. “You’re ridiculously better than me.”
“Giving up?” Margrada asked, annoying delight dripping from ever word.
Nia didn’t dignify the question with a verbal response. Instead she slammed her butt down on her chair and raised her hands over her drum, the anger in her eyes mostly self-directed, but still burning as a challenge.
Margrada smiled in response, and nodded, allowing Nia to begin this round of their battle.
Nia didn’t hesitate.
A strong offense played to her strengths, so she began belting out beats and shaping them like a cloud of battering rams. She wasn’t going to win. She knew that. If she could so much as knock Margrada’s hands off the drum for a moment though, Nia decided she’d call that a victory.
When her battering rams all veered from their assigned paths, Nia was neither surprised nor disappointed. Margrada’s playing danced rings around her own. That didn’t seem wrong at all. It was that Margrada was able to curve the battering ram beats right back at Nia so that it was her own magic which knocked her to the ground – again – that stung.
“Ready to give up?” Margrada asked.
Nia narrowed her eyes.
Margrada sounded sweet. She sounded helpful. She sounded far too cheerful about the constant failures that Nia was being subjected to. And not just cheerful, excited? No one who really cared about her would be happy to see her suffering like that.
The thought should have ignited a deeper rage in her, should have sent Nia off on a tirade of profanities to make Horgi and Grash’s ears blush.
But Margrada did care about her.
Nia knew that. She had more faith in that being true than she had in herself.
Which meant, she wasn’t failing.
This wasn’t a punishment.
This was training.
And if Margrada couldn’t tell her what she was doing wrong, that could only be for one reason. Whatever she was missing, it was something each drummer needed to find for themselves.
Nia felt a jolt of understanding tear through her.
“One more time,” she said, in barely more than a whisper as she took her seat for the battle she was going to win.
Side B – Yasgrid
Infinite solitude was meant to crush Yasgrid’s spirit. The unending plains and the boundless sky were a horror designed to annihilate her sense of self by reducing her to a speck smaller than a dust mote against the limitless grandeur of creation. Had she been a ‘proper elf girl’, or possibly just the sort of elf the nightmare was intended to feed upon, she would have drowned in agoraphobic terror.
“You are not afraid?” the nightmare around her said. “You feel…there is peace in your heart? How?”
“Because you are beautiful,” Yasgrid said. “And the stars have ever been my companions in the night.”
“And yet I am undiminished? How?” the nightmare asked.
“Because you are still a magnificent terror,” Yasgrid said. “Even loving you, I can feel my soul tremble at your majesty. If I were anyone but who I am, I would be able to feed you forever.”
“And who are you, that you can stand within me and call me beautiful?” the nightmare asked.
“Someone who needs you,” Yasgrid said.
“My purpose is one you stand outside of,” the nightmare said. “What need could have you of me?”
“There is another nightmare, one whose existence serves only her own purposes,” Yasgrid said. “She searches for me, and I for her.”
“I contain the endless sky, but I am neither shelter nor guide,” the nightmare said.
“I would have you be only what you are,” Yasgrid said.
“And how will this aid your cause?” the nightmare asked.
“You hunger for the terror of those who cannot bear a limitless world?” Yasgrid asked, reaching down to brush the blades of grass which extended in every direction.
“When I am roused, that is my purpose, when I slumber there is neither hunger nor want,” the nightmare said.
“Then what I ask of you is only that you stay alert,” Yasgrid said.
“It is a cruel thing you desire,” the nightmare said. “My hunger can grow unbearable and my wants are as endless as the sky.”
“And I can sate neither one,” Yasgrid said.
“If you could, I would not be what I am,” the nightmare said.
“Is that something you desire?” Yasgrid asked. “To become something else?”
“I desire all things, and so I desire change most of all,” the nightmare said.
“Walk this road with me then, endure your hunger, and I will deliver you from this existence to your next,” Yasgrid said.
“I am necessary. I am needed,” the nightmare said. “This world will not be the same without me.”
“When I am done, nothing in this world will be,” Yasgrid said.