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Side A – Yasgrid

Yasgrid was getting on board with the idea Kyra and Margrada were championing, though it still didn’t fully make sense to her. Fortunately Kyra wasn’t done explaining her hypothesis.

“There’s one other factor to consider as well.” Kyra glanced over to Margrada since the two of them seemed to be a on a fairly similar wavelength.

“There is, but that would have been hard enough to prove before and, I think, impossible now,” Margrada said.

It was somewhat disturbing that Nia’s girlfriend seemed to know the woman Yasgrid was intent on dating well enough that they could almost finish each other’s sentences. Especially since they came from entirely different walks of life and had virtually nothing in common.

Apart from both being insightful, caring, brilliant women who weren’t afraid to defy social conventions, cast aside their preconceptions, and let themselves love someone who they’d once seen as an opponent at best and more likely a nemesis.

Apart from all that though, they were completely different.

“You’re wondering if our souls were maybe in the wrong bodies to begin with, right?” Nia asked.

Nia wasn’t slow, despite her worry that she was, a belief which was largely formed from distorted comparisons to her incredible older sister. Yasgrid could sense Nia’s frustration with not having seen the points that Kyra and Margrada were making before they made them. Yasgrid could also feel Nia’s conviction that even as she seamlessly completed the idea Kyra had meant to discuss, that doing so still amounted to lagging behind. 

Which was what Yasgrid knew she was doing.

It was so terribly tempting in that moment to conclude that everyone around her was simply that much more brilliant than she was. 

Yasgrid treated herself to an inaudible sigh (which Nia nonetheless heard of course), and faced down the hypocrisy chiding Nia while excusing the same sort of insecurity in herself.

“There might be one method, but I don’t know if I want to,” Yasgrid said, allowing her intuition to make the leaps of imagination required to make up the distance her fears had held her back from crossing.

She shouldn’t have felt a spark of glee that the other women in the room turned to her with a trace of confusion in their expressions.

But she did.

She liked being smart.

She’d never been loud enough because, as she could now see clearly, she’d never wanted to be.

But she had wanted to be smart.

“It’s going to require the drums isn’t it?” Nia asked, following Yasgrid’s line of thinking without any cheating around in their shared mind space.

“I thought you were making a case that the drums couldn’t do this?” Kyra said.

“Setting up their original connection with the drums would have been the sort of impossible that only a special kind of genius could have managed,” Margrada said. “And Nia didn’t have access to the drums before hand. I think even now she would have a hard time managing it, mostly because it’s impossible and that’s never easy, even with the best Shatter Drumming.”

“You are very good for my ego,” Nia said and kissed the hand Margrada had on her shoulder. “In this case though, if I’m guessing what Yasgrid has in mind right, it wouldn’t be about setting up the connection, it would be about breaking it.”

Side B – Nia

Nia agreed with Yasgrid. The drums probably could tell them which body they were ‘meant’ to be in, but she couldn’t see what benefit they would gain from knowing that.

“More specifically,” Yasgrid said, to allay Kyra and Margrada’s confusion, “I think with the drums we could see if moving back to our old bodies would ‘stick’.”

“We talked about whether we wanted to change back the first night we were like this and my answer is still the same as it was then,” Nia said, holding onto Margrada’s hand perhaps a bit tighter than she should have.

“That may be an argument for why you should do it,” Kyra said, her gaze so distant it had turned entirely inwards.

“I’m not terribly inclined to risk losing my Nia,” Margrada said, covering their held hands with her other one.

Nia felt Yasgrid sigh once more.

“She’s right. Kyra that is.” Yasgrid offered a small weary smile to Nia in apology for the aggravation they would have to go through.

Not from each other.

No, Yasgrid was acknowledging how difficult Nia’s life would be the moment she told the Roadies she wanted even more time on the drums.

And how much worse it would be if she explained what she planned to do.

“You aren’t going to lose me,” Nia said, glancing up to see the kind of concern she’d hoped to never put on the face of the woman she loved.

“Why risk it though?” Margrada asked.

“Because it’s not a risk,” Yasgrid said. “What Nia said is true for me too. When we weren’t sure what would happen, or what these new lives might entail, or even if we’d have each other to help us navigate them, we still choose to continue living them.”

“Yeah. I don’t think for either of us there’s a question anymore. This life? As a Stoneling? This is the one my soul fits into the best,” Nia could have thought about that, could have spent days ruminating over her words, but as she said them, she heard nothing but the truth. Though there was a little more to the truth that she knew she had to share. “Looking back my life wasn’t all bad before though. In fact, most of what I can see now is how absurdly blessed I was. I spent so long thinking my problems were Kayelle’s fault, or my mothers, and some of them were. Sisters and mothers are complicated, but there was so much more that was wonderful than I ever let myself appreciate before. So I won’t leave that behind. I can’t. Not and be who I really am, who I really want to be. But how I engage with that life? Who I am to my mother and my sister and all the people I knew in the Darkwood? That will never be the same, because I can never be who they thought I was.”

“If you already know all that, then why bother proving that this is what you were supposed to be?” Margrada asked.

“So that everyone else will know too,” Yasgrid said.

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