Side A – Nia
The fallout was not what Nia had hoped it would be. The drummers did eventually discover who it was who had called them all back. Margrada had been hoisted up on the crowd’s shoulders and showered with some alcoholic beverage which Horgi assured Nia was both expensive and complimentary to be doused in. A particularly inspired drummer had even made up a charming bit of verse to go with the song Margrada had woven on the fly.
It had been delightful seeing Margrada celebrated as she’d always deserved to be celebrated, but all the cheering had fallen a few steps short. Nia’s gameplan had been to escape her own notoriety by making sure Margrada’s star eclipsed her own.
Anyone who’d played, or even heard the songs clearly couldn’t help but tell which of the two of them was the better drummer. Nia was proud of the work she and Her Drummers had done, but she was under no illusion that its power had come from any but the simplest of rhythms.
Well, perhaps not the simplest, she had to admit.
But compared to Margrada’s playing?
Nia was a neophyte. She knew that just as she knew that she would grow, but in the aftermath of their performance, a tiny fear had begun to grow in her. Not that she would be barred from drumming again – she already knew that Pelegar was going to be merciless in her instructions and tests before she allowed Nia to play at another series engagement.
No, what filled Nia with concern was the idea that people might mistake what had been a wild ride of exuberance and fortunate happenstance for something she was capable of doing on a whim. Or even ‘ever again’.
To be thought of as something more than she was felt somehow worse than being thought of as something less.
Hence, her ploy of redirecting the crowds attention onto someone who actually could repeat her performance more or less at will.
It wasn’t a bad plot either. It mostly worked.
Except that Her Drummers remembered her, and little by little, she heard the story of what she’d done for them being embellished and growing larger-than-life even before the night was done.
Part of her prayed that more booze would flow through the hall, enough to drown out the memories of what had happened, or at least dim them to point where people’s natural disbelief could rise and bring the experience back in line with reality, and their image of her down to earth where it belonged.
Nia tried to imagine the disappointment people would feel when they discovered that she was far from the Ancient Drumming Goddess that some tales were making her out to be. Sadly, it wasn’t hard to imagine disappointment. She knew that emotion all too well, and hated that it so easily strode onto the stage of her mind during what should have been a moment of supreme triumph.
Her brooding was cut short by a barrel of bubbly something or other being dumped over her head.
“So who here thinks this place should be renamed in her honor?” Margrada called out above the crowd, a wicked smile gracing her lips as she made eye contact with her beloved.
Side B – Yasgrid
The Darkwood wasn’t much happier with Yasgrid’s presence than it had been but in the whisper of its winds and the creak of its roots, there was something which lay between acceptance and defiance.
Through her rambling trek, she’d started to prove to the wood, and to herself, that even with the power she’d laid claim to, Yasgrid wasn’t a danger to those around her.
Or even those who strove against her.
Not on a physical level at least.
Certainly she could call on the Hearts to pour forth fire and rage, but while that was possible, it was also wholly outside of what she could do and remain herself. Far more important than smiting any foe, even and especially Elshira, was the overriding goal of protecting and nurturing the Hearts she held close.
Even a gentle caress of the sleeping ones showed her scattered images of the torment which had driven them, the fragments of the personality which had accumulated around them to form the Troubles they’d been.
Those identities had been silenced and laid to rest by Endings, carrying with them, in Yasgrid’s mind at least, the weight of the sins the Troubles had committed.
As they slumbered their dreams washed away the memories of what they had once been, the last residue of the death the Trouble’s had been given chasing the linger fragments of their former beings out, away from the world.
In tiny glimpses the Darkwood began to see and understand that, and with understanding, acceptance followed along easily enough.
Except that Yasgrid had let slip what the course of her life was going to do, and the scale of change she intended to offer the Darkwood. Changes which threatened to come far too swiftly, arriving with the turning of the sun from its waxing time to its waning.
The Darkwood knew what it was though. It understood the power which had been sown into it, and which had grown and flourished and sowed back into itself over again and again.
A tiny spark, such as a mortal life, could start a blaze, but the Darkwood would endure.
Even if it was reduced to a barren field of ash, with no trees standing, and no life crawling on its surface, the Darkwood would still be itself.
Roots would dig into the new soil, and with the turning of the seasons, new life would arrive, and grow to fill the void left by its predecessor.
“But none of that will happen at all, will it?” King asked.
“It’s easy to focus on the worst outcomes when evaluating something new,” Yasgrid said. “Its a comforting belief, because we believe it lets us prepare for what’s to come.”
“I don’t believe there is any preparing for you.”