Side A – Nia
Nia took her seat and readied her hands above her drum. She’d taken her seat dozens of times already and raised her hands just as many times.
None of that mattered though.
This was the first time.
Before she’d been playing knowing she was going to lose.
Margrada was so much better than she was. Margrada had years of experience. Margrada was poised and polished and perfect. It was idiocy to think a fledgling drummer would have any kind of chance at all against her.
And none of that mattered.
Nia wasn’t going to play against a perfect opponent who she could never hope to match.
Nia was going to win.
From the moment her hand struck the drum, she held onto that thought.
As the magic from her beats met and shattered against the ones from Margrada’s drum, she focused only on the music of victory that was beating within her chest.
Battering ram slammed into her with the force of gentle feathers.
The earth below her cracked open to swallow her whole and she rose on the winds of her soaring laughter.
Pressure crushed in from all sides and she became the beats themselves, ringing free through the air.
It wasn’t music she was playing, or the world she was changing.
She wasn’t even truly changing at all.
From a rushing, eternally free wind, to the rumbling of monumental stones, to the surging chorus of life bursting from lands washed clean by an apocalypse of lava, Nia danced through so very many transformations but in each one she was always and only ever herself.
Had Margrada told her about this, Nia could never have understood.
“Change to flow to victory, without altering who or what you are.”
“Be yourself, because you are enough, even when a girl at a drum cannot hope to win.”
“Cast aside your limitations, to revel in your own weight and weakness.”
All of the words that might have described what Nia was experiencing would have sounded like gibberish or nonsense but as she changed and changed and found herself in each new expression of her being the idea of capturing the experience in words was the only thing that seemed laughable.
Where there should have been tension in keeping diametrically opposed ideas not only in her mind but in her hands and in the magic she were crafting, Nia found only a sense of release and freedom.
She didn’t need to be perfect.
She didn’t need to out compete Margrada.
All she needed to do was play. The music was the magic, and she was the music. Force? Technique? Passion? Skill? Those were elements of expression. Nice. Useful even. But it wasn’t power that made beauty.
With each beat, in the ever deepening rhythms they wove together, Nia painted a portrait of herself in colors she’d never before imagined.
Until, at last, the song was done.
Neither drummer lay sprawled on the ground.
Neither one was battered or beaten.
But Nia had won.
Side B – Yasgrid
Yasgrid woke.
Beside her a cat formed from darkness, and dreams, and the unknown stirred, roused from his nap but not displeased to return to the world of wakefulness.
“That went well,” King said.
“Thanks to you,” Yasgrid said.
“I offered no proclamations on your behalf,” King said.
“None were needed,” Yasgrid said. “You chose a good nightmare for me to begin with.”
“It was close by,” King said.
“I understand,” Yasgrid said, and held silent any further thanks. If King had wanted praise for his efforts Yasgrid knew he would have made that clear.
“There are more,” King said, a mere note rather than a promise or sign of any particular interest in seeking them out.
“That’s good,” Yasgrid said. “I’m going to need a lot more before this over.”
“Will it be over?” King asked. “Can you see the ending that you wish to write?”
Yasgrid pulled her knees up to her chest and leaned back against a fallen tree trunk.
“The one that I want to write?” she asked and gave the question a long moment of thought.
She’d left Blue Falls and left behind new friends and, if she was being honest with herself, new family, because she felt she had to.
She’d run herself into exhaustion because it was what was required of her.
She’d been willing to cast away her new existence and be the smallest of animals if it meant preserving the ones she wished to save.
Was any of that the story she wanted to write with her life though?
Obviously not.
Yasgrid hadn’t grown up around Shatter drummers her whole life without learning that sometimes you had to play the songs that life sent you instead of the ones you yearned to play.
And yet…
All around her was a forest unlike any she could have ever imagined as a child of the mountains. She sat on soft moss in a body which should have seemed terrifyingly frail but was home to her as the one she’d been born into had never really been.
What was she if not someone who’d found a way to play her own song despite what life had planned for her?
“It’s too early for me to write an ending,” she said. “But I know a few of the things I would write into my life from here, and a few people.”
“I am one of them I should hope?” King said.
“Most certainly,” Yasgrid said. “I am graced and honored by your company.”
King closed his eyes slowly and looked away, as regal a smile as Yasgrid had ever seen.
“Shall we away?” he asked.
Yasgrid breathed in the scents of the Darkwood, and let the stillness around her fill her soul.
“In time,” she said. “I made a mistake before. I let my fears consume me and they drove me almost to ruin. Almost into the arms of my adversary.”
“So you will bide your time in order to avoid her?” King asked.
“I am done avoiding Elshira. It’s time she started avoiding me.”