Side A – Yasgrid
Hunting a Trouble shouldn’t have felt like an old and familiar task. Yasgrid had only spent a few months as Endings Bearer before striking off on her own to track down Kyra and rescue her from Elshira’s prison. As Yasgrid sailed through the forest though, each tree she leapt from felt like one she’d known since it was a sapling no matter how tall and mighty they’d grown. Every brook she crossed was one she’d watched carve its tiny path into the Darkwood with relentless flowing tenacity. Every creature was one whose lineage she knew going back to the ancient days of yore.
“This is you, isn’t it?” she asked, conjuring Endings back to her hand. “I’m seeing the Darkwood as you do?”
“You are seeing the Darkwood through your own eyes,” Endings said. “You are merely less limited than once you were, and more aware of our connection.”
It was true. Endings wasn’t, and perhaps had never been, something apart from her. At the very least, from the moment she agreed to be its Bearer, they’d been two parts in a greater whole. Still though, Yasgrid suspected she was seeing more than she was ever supposed to, and she suspected she knew why.
“You notice everything,” she said. “I’m surprised they didn’t limit your vision to see to only Troubles?”
“Many Troubles appear as other things,” Endings said. “I could not fulfill my purpose if my senses were dimmed to only perceive the ones which had already made their natures manifest.”
Yasgrid noticed the phrasing Endings had chosen. Its senses. Not the senses it was given, but the senses it possessed on its own.
Each new observation and each new guess seemed to draw her closer in to Endings. In her hand the crystal blade glowed like a star, the energy of her connection with it leaving behind a trail of rainbow light which chased them through the Darkwood like a cosmic tail.
I could stretch forth with nothing more than a word and break open the secrets spun around it like glass, Yasgrid thought, taking care to shroud her thoughts in the darkness of the Nightmares she’d treated with.
She didn’t need to hide them from Endings. It would not rebel against her for her desire or the power she held to see it done.
But that desire and power might destroy it.
Might.
At the least, Endings would be changed, irrevocably, if she forced it to confront the truth she believed it could not speak of. That would be an easy decision to make for her, but the consequences could be ones which Endings would not be able to bear, and if she was right, that was the last thing she would ever wish for it.
Or for the Darkwood.
“You’ve chosen your path,” Endings said.
“It’s easier now,” Yasgrid said.
“You see where the Trouble lies?”
“I do. I think if Elshira had ever understood you, she would have been able to find it too,” Yasgrid said, landing in front of a plain cottage, all alone in a clearing over which hung an alien sky.
“Ah, you’ve arrived. I’ve been waiting for you. Come in, come in,” a bent and crooked crone said from inside the door.
Side B – Nia
Finding love is never easy. Finding love when the universe was screaming a cacophony of sound in your own voice, louder than you could possibly mustered was a bit more complicated still.
Clinging to Elgi as tightly as she could, Nia reached inside, thought of her mother’s kindest smile, and gave herself the one thing she’d always struggled with the most: the freedom to fail.
In the ephemeral whirlwind of her world spanning song, she couldn’t find the first trace of Margrada’s playing.
Her grand plan wasn’t working.
She wasn’t strong enough to move the song, and she wasn’t clever enough to outwit it.
And that was okay.
She listened again.
The howl of the song, exalting to the heavens the majesty of two creations spiraling together tore through her, and Nia was deafened to all else.
She’d failed.
So she listened some more.
There was no sign of Margrada. Nothing but the song. All encompassing. All overwhelming. All and everything.
So Nia listened. Not in vain. Not in desperation. Not hoping that some new stratagem would spring forth from her panic driven mind.
She just listened.
Within her heart, tidal waves of shame and fear crashed down. There had been so much riding on her. She’d been so certain that she could do what needed to be done.
And she hadn’t.
So she listened.
She had failed, but she was still there. She hadn’t reached the end, she was still going. Her failures didn’t define her, they were just failures. She hadn’t found Margrada’s song but that wasn’t a truth etched into the future, only the past.
With each beat, her journey continued, the rhythm she was caught in dancing her step by step into a future which held many promises and far fewer certainties.
Pain awaited her. And more failure. Moments when she wouldn’t be able to bear the burdens life put on her. Moments when rage, and shame, and despair would drag her down.
But they would pass.
Her failures could not eclipse the triumphs she would win. The burdens she buckled under, she would rise and carry anew when strength returned to her or helping hands lifted them with her. Rage, and shame, and despair? They would never be enough to drown the love, and pride, and hope in her heart, however uncomfortably that family of emotions might manage to coexist with each other.
Nia failed, but in failing, and accepting the failure, she felt a weight she’d carried for her whole life begin to shift.
She thought of her mother’s smile. So often given, and so rarely had Nia felt it was earned. Naosha had tried to set the best example for her daughters that she could. Had she understood that she’d set too good of one? That Nia had never once believed she could live up to that example?
Or had Naosha accepted that in raising her daughters, she would fail too. That there were no perfect answers, that the best she could do was give Nia what lessons Naosha had understood and have faith that her daughter would someday understand them. Someday understand her.
Nia had let herself go into the song. Faded away and followed her mother’s example even though she couldn’t fill the unused spaces as Naosha could. Would only fail to be even a pale shadow of her mother.
And so she failed.
She would never be her mother. Or Kayelle. Or Yasgrid. Or anyone else.
Only herself.
But that was enough.
That had always been enough, even in failure, she would always be enough.
And so she listened.
And heard the distant rhythm of the woman who held her heart calling her back.