Side A – Yasgrid
Who did Yasgrid want to be? The question was so simple it didn’t seem to have any real meaning at all.
But that didn’t mean she had an answer to it. Or at least not a final one.
“I don’t know. I think I’m still figuring out who I want to be. I think I probably always will be,” she said. “It feels like that what I signed up for by coming back to this life rather than wandering off on the cosmic plane. I don’t know what’s to come, or who I’m capable of being, or what the cost will be for what I want.”
Kyra giggled and then burst into a full fledged chuckle.
“I’ve seen you as so many things, but that had to be the most ‘you’ thing I’ve ever heard,” she said and then she shook her head to correct herself. “Not the confusion. I think everyone is feeling that, or at least everyone with any self awareness. No, the ‘you’ part of that was that you embraced this. That rather than being terrified of being in the dark, you welcomed it and saw the adventure in it.”
“Well, I mean, this life is what I know. It’s full of the things that mean things to me. Drifting through the cosmos as a divine being? Where’s the meaning in that? And how isn’t it terribly lonely?”
“No more mortal pains, no more earthly fears? Answerable to no one, able to bend existence to your will? There aren’t many who would turn that down,” Kyra said.
It was Yasgrid’s turn to laugh.
“When you put it like that, it sounds a tiny bit foolish,” she said.
“No, not a fool.” A warm, inner calm beamed from Kyra. Yasgrid wasn’t sure of the source, but she was more than willing to enjoy the glow. “Just someone who is braver than I could have ever guessed when we met.”
“I’ve run away from a lot of things,” Yasgrid said. “I ran away from you.”
“You did no such thing,” Kyra said with a solid certainty. “You respected my wishes, and the turmoil I was suffering. Everything that happened to me? That was all my own fault.”
“Nope. Absolutely not,” Yasgrid said. “Elshira kidnapping you is on her. Maybe your choices gave her the opportunity, maybe it was how your people treat everyone that did that, but what she did is something she’s guilty of, not you.”
“Nor you,” Kyra said. “I know that a lot of what you went through wasn’t for me. Elshira needed to be stopped, and the Darkwood needed to change. That couldn’t have happened without you. In a lot of the threads that I followed, or at least a lot of the ones I was drawn to, you didn’t give up on me either. Those threads are all gone now, like I said. Our past doesn’t have to determine our future, we’re not locked into anything except what we want.”
“If I may be so bold then,” Yasgrid said, reaching out her hand with her palm turned up in offering to Kyra, “what I want is you.”
Side B – Nia
The song was over. The last drum had sounded. The mountains no longer rang with echoes of distant harmonies and the wood no longer thrummed with the beat of stone.
The parties and the celebrations were still in full swing and would be for days if Nia was able to make any guess as to the exuberance of the Stonelings and the merriment of the Elves.
For her though, it was, at long last, time to rest.
Marianne and Belhelen had independently noticed how exhausted she was and had unceremoniously scooped her up (Belhelen’s work), made excuses which people seemed to buy (Marianne’s work) and carried her back to her humble cart which was parked far enough outside town that only a few of the Roadies who preferred solitude were around to stand watch.
Nia wouldn’t have minded if they’d stayed to keep her company, despite how heavy her eyelids felt, but neither seemed inclined to tempt her to stay away and so they left, an odd pairing and yet an oddly companionable one.
Flopped down onto the bed of furs, Nia had tried to reflect on where she was and all it had taken to get her there. She’d managed to remember back to the morning she woke to find herself in a strange new body and the worry she’d felt on the night that followed that she’d wake to find it taken away again.
As sleep pulled her down, she knew that was something she would never need to be afraid of. She would never be the Elf girl that she’d been. She’d chosen to become who she was, in Resonance with Endings power, and with every drum beat that she played. Even if she was swapped back in the body that was Yasgrid’s now, Nia would always be the Stoneling woman she’d become.
Contented in that knowledge she slipped down into the refreshing embrace of sleep, lingering there until an entirely more enticing embrace presented itself.
“I’m sorry,” Margrada said, adjusting the furs to cover them both. “I didn’t mean to wake you, I just…”
There were so many replies Nia could have made to that.
Teasing might have been fun, with all they’d been through a little humor would balance all the seriousness nicely.
Reassurance came much more readily to Nia’s lips than teasing though. She didn’t want Margrada to feel bad in general and absolutely not for crawling into bed with her. Nia had done some profoundly silly things but even she wasn’t silly enough to dissuade the woman she’d gnaw off her right foot to be with from getting close to her.
Margrada didn’t need reassurance though. And she didn’t need teasing. What she needed, what Nia really hoped she needed, was Nia.
And so she said the words that had been lurking in her heart for longer than she’d been aware of her desire for them.
“Marry me!”