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Side A – Nia

Margrada was laughing at her. Literally holding in her guffaws.

“That was the most doomed I’ve seen you look,” she said. “What do they have on you?”

“Nothing!” Nia lied. “Nothing at all.”

Margrada’s raised eyebrow spoke of a disbelief taller than the mountain they were on.

“Or, everything,” Nia said. “And I know Marianne. She answers questions. Ugh. You do not want to know what I was like as a kid. It was terrible.”

“Oh that is just unbearably cute,” Margrada said before growing a hairs breadth more serious. “Look at me though. I mean really look at me.”

Nia lifted her eyes to meet the woman she loved.

“What part of knowing each other excludes knowing who we were?” Margrada asked. “I was a miserable kid too. I probably still a miserable person now. But you? You claim you like me like this. Like who I am. Right?”

Nia grumbled.

“I’m being an idiot, I know,” she said. “But I like who I am now. I like being this version of me. The earlier me? She wasn’t who I wanted to be, and I would hate for her to sabotage…wow, it sounds even more idiotic when I say it outloud.”

“No it doesn’t,” Margrada said. “It sounds like you’ve been burned by it before. If you spent your life hiding, I could see how it would be a sore point.”

“It wasn’t exactly like that,” Nia said, trying to work out what her life really had been. “I didn’t know I wanted to be this. I didn’t know being this loud and open was even a thing someone could do.”

“For reference, you don’t seem to be much louder than Yasgrid was,” Margrada said. “I think if you had been, people would have noticed the change a lot sooner.”

“I know, and Yasgrid’s settled into being as quiet as I tried to be pretty well too.” Nia wondered if they hadn’t been swept up in all the excitement that unfolded over the last several months how easily Yasgrid could have become the perfect lady of the woods that Naosha always seemed to manage to be.

“So you weren’t really hiding them, neither of you I guess?” Margrada had given Nia enough space so that they could see each others expressions.

“Yeah, it was more a struggle of trying be someone that I can only now see I didn’t really want to be. My mother, Naosha, I always thought I had to be like her. It wasn’t until I came here that I felt what it was like to be someone who wasn’t trying to a smaller version of her. Instead I got to be this great big version of myself and so, so many of the troubles I had over the years just made so much more sense.”

“Troubles are a special thing for the Darkwood, right? I thought I heard some of that in the song,” Margrada said.

“They are, but this wasn’t that kind of Trouble,” Nia said. “Those are when you have a problem where there is no resolution and you can’t just walk away from it.”

“Would that include problems that you’re not even aware are problems?” Margrada asked, and Nia’s breath caught in her throat at the implication at the heart of the question.

Side B – Yasgrid

Troubles were not something which were supposed to exist in the Darkwood any longer. Part of freeing Endings power and sharing it with all had meant releasing it to shatter the bindings which held the Troubled Hearts in servitude.

Yasgrid didn’t regret that. Using souls to carry away the metaphysical energies that built up in an Elf’s heart when they were faced with problems which could not be solved was a clever solution to an odd design problem in the Elves’ creation. Forcing souls to do that work however was an abomination, and one the Darkwood was well rid of.

And yet she still suspected that people would not be pleased to find that a fairly large number of Troubles (or at least their hearts) still remained within the Darkwood since they still slept within her.

“It’s not what you think,” Yasgrid said, trying to work out how to explain what she’d done in a manner that would make sense to anyone else.

“And what do you suppose I think it is?” Kyra asked.

“Elshira kept Troubles in her thrall. They were a weapon and a source of power for her,” Yasgrid said. “If the other Fate Dancers find out what I’ve done, I’m reasonably certain they’ll try to execute me on the spot rather than risk another Elshira rising to oppose them.”

“You’re right, they would certainly do that,” Kyra said. “Or they would try. I expect it would not go well for them. Not with what you can choose to do now. You’re also wrong. In none of the possible futures or similar presents that watched did I every see you become anyone like Elshira.”

Yasgrid wanted to breathe a sigh of relief at that, but Kyra was still speaking.

“There were some where you became something far more dire than she was but do you know what was true in all of the ones that I saw?” Kyra asked.

“I’m terrified to ask,” Yasgrid said, able to picture all too easily how much worse than Elshira she could still become.

“You never lost yourself in any of the threads I observed,” Kyra said. “If you become terrible, it will be because something terrible is needed. That’s not something I saw you survive all the time, so I would prefer if we avoid those fates, as I believe would the Troubles you shelter.”

“That I can believe,” Yasgrid said, relaxing a bit from the warm tones in Kyra’s voice. “There’s something important for you to know about them though. What I’m holding aren’t Troubles. Once they were, but Endings unmade that part of them. All that remained were the Troubles’ hearts, the parts that were the first and final victims of the Troubled magics that surrounded them.”

“The Fate Dancers won’t believe that, but, as I am no longer a Fate Dancer, I can,” Kyra said. “One thing puzzles me though. The only other Bearers the Fate Dancer tales mention taking Troubles into themselves were Bearers who bore Troubles of their own. Elshira being an obvious example there. But Stonelings don’t have Troubles. Do they?”

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