Side A – Nia
The beat began with a single strike on the drums.
Nia’s strike.
She hadn’t surprised Margrada with it, that would have been a singularly terrible idea, but the people around them hadn’t been expecting it and quieted instantly despite the fact that even if they’d screamed at the top of their lungs it wouldn’t have drowned out the song Nia and Margrada were forming.
Nia’s beat was answered by Margrada’s.
Two beats. Two patterns. Two drummers.
Becoming a single beat was all but effortless. Nia led and Margrada followed not as an echo but as a counterpoint, standing in the song as Nia’s equal and as her partner.
How Shatter Drummers didn’t get lost in playing was something Nia still couldn’t understand since it was only the urgency of their situation which pushed her onwards rather than dwelling in the contented moment of orbiting Margrada’s song and the togetherness it brought.
The Darkwood awaited them though and Nia reached out to it. The distance was far shorter than it should have been, even though she had not reached out to Yasgrid who was never farther than a thought.
Behind her, Nia felt Margrada’s song dancing along, spinning threads to lead them home. That freed Nia to play them forward, unconcerned about the bodies they were leaving behind. In the distance, as though a mountain peak away, she could hear the crowds beginning to stir. It wasn’t hard for an experienced drummer to know something unusual was happening, and for an old hand like Jurdy, the extent – and danger – of what Nia and Margrada were doing was likely all too clear.
Nia was undeterred by that thought. She’d chosen to seek out her mother, and while that terrified a part of her, there was another chamber in her heart which beat with joy at seeing Naosha again. Life as a Stoneling might be a truer reflection of who she really was, but that didn’t mean nothing in her past held any value, and it certainly didn’t mean that she couldn’t appreciate the love her mother had always shown her.
She channeled that into her drumming and her song took flight, bourne beyond the clouds on wings of longing.
Margrada didn’t have those feelings to draw on. She couldn’t match the raw energy that Nia poured into the song, but she had skill and technique to spare.
Where Nia’s song was loud and unrefined, Margrada’s gave it a clear shape and sharp substance.
Below them, or perhaps around them, the world whirled. Foreign lands buzzed by blurring into an indistinct haze, until the vast and shadowed edge of the Darkwood loomed before them.
The Darkwood was, by it’s nature, a forbidding place. The Elves did not suffer intruders lightly, and it was only in seeing it again through eyes more firmly Stoneling than ever, that Nia really understood how isolated and isolating the woods could be.
Regardless of the form she wore though, she was a daughter of those shadows and they held those who were dear to her.
With unflinching hands, she drove them across the threshold and into a corner of the world which had grown stranger than she knew in her absence.
Side B – Yasgrid
Basking in the glow of a god, even if he was just a fledgling one, was something Yasgrid felt should have filled her with more awe. Instead, she couldn’t help giggling at his antics.
“I’m sorry but they’re just so good!” the Gardener said as he crammed another handful of berries into her mouth, smearing a good third of them around his lips.
“No, by all means, enjoy them!” Yasgrid said. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay, and to thank you.”
“Thank me? Why?” the Gardener asked.
“You saved my life,” Yasgrid said. “I hadn’t meant to put you in a situation where you had to do that. I would have liked to let you rest as long as you wanted to.”
“You did though?” the Gardener said. “I was trapped and then you freed me and I sleep so long and in so much peace. I still don’t understand it. I can’t see, even now, how that could be. But that’s not surprising really.”
“It’s surprising to me,” Ilia said. “I wasn’t the whole who crafted your people but I had no idea you’d been built to be capable of holding soul sparks, or healing them. To be honest, I don’t think I even knew they could be healed.”
“Soul sparks? You knew what the Troubles are made from?” Yasgrid said.
“In general terms I still do, but part of the joy of giving up my divine power is not having to carry all the knowledge I was once burdened by,” Ilia said. “Knowledge that I would like to point out was definitively wrong on several points and kept me trapped within a somewhat miserable existence since creation was finished.”
“Can you tell me what you remember of them?” Yasgrid asked.
“Sure, but it’s stuff you’ve already figured out I think,” Ilia said. “You clearly know that the Hearts, I think that’s what you call them, are twisted into Troubles by Divine Machinery, and that they were created to prevent some behavioral issues the gods had with the Elves.”
“I suspected that was true, but it’s good to know for sure,” Yasgrid said.
“Sadly you really don’t yet,” Ilia said. “My knowledge, especially what remains, isn’t all that reliable, though I think what I said about the Troubles feels fairly solid. Don’t trust that everything I say is true though. I’m as mortal as you are now, and just as fallible. Perhaps more. On both counts.”
“What do you mean?” Yasgrid asked.
“Well, you haven’t made a mistake on par with giving up the power to shape Creation, nor have you accidentally created a fledgling deity who is liable to make all manner of cataclysmic mistakes while he figures out what he can do.”
“I’ll be okay,” the Gardener said. “I’ve got you to guide me right.”
“And that would be his first mistake,” Ilia said.