Side A – Nia
Margrada looked grave. Margrada looked angry? Margrada was rigid with the sort of tension that said Nia’s words had landed on very tender soil and if the wrong words followed things would not be pleasant at all.
“If you are joking about this,” in the spare moonlight, her eyes held the faintest glassy sheen, “if this is just something silly, or a game…”
Nia heard the words her younger self would have rushed to say, the assurances that no, this was real, and wouldn’t Margrada please, please believe her.
But she didn’t need to reassure Margrada of how she felt, because the fear that clutched at Margrada’s heart didn’t come from Nia, so none of her words could really touch it.
What Nia could do, and what she found herself peacefully delighted to do, was wait. She wasn’t going to leave. She wasn’t going to demand. She wasn’t going to do anything but be ready for however and whenever Margrada was ready for her.
“We haven’t even been courting,” Margrada said at last, her eyes turning even glassier.
“For the Elves,courting is a period we take to understand who each other are,” Nia said. “I think I know who we are together now, but there is always more we can learn.”
“So you want to start courting?” Margrada looked both disappointed and relieved.
“I want you. Forever,” Nia said. “I’m not half asleep, I’m not ensorcelled, and I’m not kidding. I want you, but I want you on your terms. If you’re not ready for that, you can say ‘no’, or ‘not yet’. You won’t lose me. If it would feel weird not to spend time courting before making a decision like this, then of course I would want to court you! You are important to me. Your happiness is important to me. Why on the green growing earth would I say that and then turn around and ask you to be uncomfortable?”
That felt a little back-slidey but Nia wasn’t going to apologize, even to herself for showing a bit of her emotions. Not when they seemed to hammer through some of the ice that had built up around Margrada.
“I hate you,” Margrada said, looking away from Nia. “This is stupid.”
Which wasn’t exactly the response to her proposal that Nia had been hoping for, except for the part where Margrada’s tone made them clearly a lie.
“You don’t owe me an answer,” Nia said. “The only one you owe anything to is yourself, and all you need to do there is take the time to know what you want your answer to be.”
“Idiot,” Margrada said, turning to Nia with eyes that rippled like the sea.
“Really, it’s…” Nia started to say, but Margrada cut her off.
“You weren’t supposed to be like this,” she said. “I was supposed to hate you, and fight with you, and beat you in the Shatter Band, and prove to everyone how it didn’t matter whose daughter you were, just how good you learned to be.”
Nia considered responding but knew she didn’t need to. All she needed to do was listen.
“You weren’t…” Margrada started to say but sighed and let a smile finally crease the corners of her mouth. “You weren’t but you are. I don’t know how you did it. I wanted so much to hate you for so long I think, and then, when we were finally together, I find that you’re this…” she gestured to all of Nia, “ugh, I still can’t.”
“Can’t what?” Nia asked.
“Can’t believe how much I love you,” Margrada said. “And I can’t believe you asked me first!”
Side B – Yasgrid
Yasgrid hadn’t been sure what she was going to say when she met Kyra again. Fortunately for her, that wasn’t a problem since Kyra was sleeping peacefully when Yasgrid slipped into her room.
Dashing over and waking her up didn’t enter Yasgrid’s mind. The quiet restfulness of Kyra’s slumber was something Yasgrid wasn’t to cherish, not disturb.
Settling into a plush and comfy chair on the other side of the room, Yasgrid drew her knees up to chest and let her thoughts drift out in the spiral they were wandering around anyways.
Kyra had spent months viewing their futures together. She’d learned perhaps not who Yasgrid was but who she could be.
Or who Yasgrid could have been, before Endings power was released.
As to who Yasgrid could be from where they were? That was a difficult question to answer. Not so much for lack of options though. Within her, Yasgrid could still feel a chorus of other souls, sleeping soundly.
All through the ordeal she’d been in, she’d been able to give them refuge. If there was anything she was proud of in her life, that was something she knew couldn’t be taken from her.
A few of the Troubled Hearts had woken and chosen not to return to their slumber. Yasgrid guessed they were the younger Troubles she’d taken in. Ones who were able to cast off what they’d once been and follow the Hearts which had helped craft the song shared by the woods and the mountains.
Even as those Hearts lay sleeping through, Yasgrid’s beat with magics all her own.
She was not the woman Kyra had met and traveled with, even apart from the change in Endings power which she also carried.
The oft-lonely, not-loud-enough little Stoneling girl should, in theory, have been nothing but a fading memory of the Elven Sorceress who walked between life and death…but she wasn’t,
For all that Yasgrid felt worlds more comfortable in the skin she wore as an Elf – even the sizes of the things around her felt more correct – the girl she’d been was still there, was still her.
If Kyra’s words in the dream were correct though, that was Yasgrid’s choice. Endings power had changed their fates, Yasgrid could sense that easily enough.
So why was she carrying forward the painful bits of her past into what she hoped would be a better future?
“I think I’m still dreaming,” Kyra said, her eyes barely open but resting on Yasgrid nonetheless.
Oh. Right. Because part of becoming who she was, was learning to appreciate who she’d been, especially since that woman had been the one Kyra had fallen for.