Side A -Yasgrid
Stepping across the veil from death back to the living world wasn’t as difficult as most would imagine it to be. Veils are not typically made of particularly robust substances. In Yasgrid’s case though there was an additional factor which made it simple; she was still quite alive.
Her sojourn into the realm of the dead hadn’t sapped her vitality or ended her mortal existence because she was sustained by magics which transcended mortality in every sense. From the song which still surged through her in, to the magics she’d awoken in her journeys, to her reclaimed position as a Bearer of Endings power, she could have not only passed through the veil, she could have rent it wide open and denied death any purchase on the living world.
Even before her journey though she would have known what a monumentally bad idea that would have been. Some of the earliest training a Shatter Drummer was put through involved lessons in understanding how complex the natural order of the world was and how extreme the ramifications of tampering with it could be.
So of course she’d made a foundation of her plan that she was going to change the Darkwood down to its most fundamental level.
“We have a few moments here I think,” Kyra said.
Around them the dream Yasgrid had been dreaming before the world came apart lay in tatters, but it was a still space she and Kyra could share. No longer quite a dream and not something as intimate as the mindspace Yasgrid shared with Nia, but big enough to be an oasis for at least a little while.
“I don’t know where to begin,” Yasgrid said. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever actually see you again.”
“That’s funny, because I’ve seen you a lot in places like this since I…since we parted,” Kyra said.
“I shouldn’t have left, I’m sorry,” Yasgrid said, trying to remember if they’d already had that conversation or not? She’d had it with herself so many times it was hard to tell any longer.
“That’s a broken thread,” Kyra said and apparently saw the look of confusion which swept over Yasgrid’s face. “A thread of fate. It’s a past we shared, but it has no connection to where we are now or the futures that are before us.”
“If I’d been with you though…” Yasgrid didn’t want to think about the torments Elshira had inflicted on Kyra in her months of captivity, but it was hard to think of anything else.
“You could have saved me. Or you could have died. Or we could have become bitter enemies. Or we could already be lovers,” Kyra said. “There were so many futures that led out of that moment, and so many of them were horrifying, but none of those, not a one, would have led us here, to this moment, to being who we are now.”
“How is that possible?” Yasgrid asked.
“You did more than save me,” Kyra said. “You gave me a whole new fate, a whole new life. I can’t see it yet. I don’t even if I’m still a Fate Dancer, I suspect not, but what I do know is who I want to forge that new future with.”
Side B – Nia
The song had reached its last crescendo and was, at last, winding down. Nia could feel the power that had been gathered returning to the land and the sky and the hearts of those who’d summoned it.
The portal that she’d thought Osdora would be able to help them close had become a permanent feature and Gray Rift had been completely transformed.
Somehow that wasn’t as terrifying as she’d imagined it would be though.
Through the communion between the forest and the mountains the changes in both had become familiar. The creeping crystal was not going to sweep over either the rest of Darkwood, or any more of the Stoneling mountains. The two realms were not going to lose their unique identities and no one’s homes were going to be lost. In coming together, both the people and their lands had become something more than they’d imagined they could be.
All of that however was something for the future to deal with.
As the song wound down to its final notes, Nia was left with a million questions and two million thoughts.
“They’ve already met,” Marianne said, plopping down onto the bench Nia had collapsed onto.
Naosha had been called away but had left with the promise they would speak more later, a promise which Nia for once was looking forward to seeing fulfilled. Audiences with her mother had always felt like gauntlets to be run before, but those days belonged to another life. Naosha wasn’t the woman Nia had always imagined her to be, and it was well past time, Nia thought, for the two of them to get to know each other.
“They who?” she asked, feeling refreshingly relaxed around the girl she’d been madly in love with less than half a year earlier.
“Your mother and your girlfriend,” Mariane said, sweeping her eyes up and down Nia’s new form. “You were worrying about how you were going to handle that.”
“You don’t know that,” Nia said, incredulous at the claim but unable to keep a smile from wrinkling the corner of her lips.
“Am I wrong then?” Marianne asked. She was still as gorgeous as she’d ever been, maybe even more so with the casual air she wore, but Nia didn’t feel as tongue tied or desperately awed by her as she had before.
“No,” Nia said. “Or that was one thing my thoughts were looping around at least.”
“And now it’s one less thing for you to worry about,” Marianne said.
“And what about you? What worries are you chewing on?” Nia asked.
“I don’t worry.”
“You don’t show your worry,” Nia said. “You don’t let your worry control your decisions. But you worry all the time, about everything. It was one of the reasons I loved you.”
“Loved? Past tense?” Marianne said with what could have been either suspicion or relief in her voice but also had an echo or two of disappointment Nia thought.
“Oh, I still love you,” Nia said. “You were my best friend before I stopped paying attention to the things you needed. I was so busy ‘falling in love with you’ that I wasn’t putting any value on the love we already had or how uncomfortable I was making you.”
“And now?” Marianne asked, suspicion and hope mingling in her expression.
“Now I think I’d like to listen,” Nia said. “And maybe if I do, I’ll hear that my friend still wants to be friends with me.”