Side A – Yasgrid
They were going to do something foolish. Yasgrid was used to that, but somehow the certainty she’d had in Kyra’s room hadn’t quite followed her back to her own.
“Are we tempting fate here?” Nia asked.
The two of them were alone. Kyra had said she needed more rest, which Yasgrid translated as giving some time for Nia and Yasgrid to talk out their concerns in the privacy to which they’d grown accustomed.
“I’d think if anyone would know it would be the former Fate Dancer,” Yasgrid said.
“And she’s in favor of it, but, I don’t know,” Nia said. “I’m pretty happy with how things are. Is it really worth taking any risks at all at this point?”
Yasgrid swirled a finger in the air and felt one of the Darkwood’s breezes take notice and swirl along with her. Her sorcery was one of connections and relationships and was so much a part of her that she couldn’t tell where it ended and she began or vice versa.
“Is it a risk?” she asked, mostly to herself, but Nia often had better insights about Yasgrid than Yasgrid allowed herself to see.
“Everything is a risk,” Nia said. “I don’t think we’re going to discover that we were wrong and we should be stuck back into our old bodies and our old lives, but who’s to say there isn’t other damage we could do. If our connection broke, we might wind up in the bodies we have now, but, well, it would be lonely not to be able to talk to you like this.”
“I’d miss this too,” Yasgrid said. “I never had a sister, but I always imagined what it would be like. That was part of what made me think I was responsible for this. It’s so close to what I’d hoped for when I was little.”
“I think that was part of my worry too – I’d tried to wish away Kayelle so often, or dreamed of a ‘better sister’ replacing her that this felt too close to those daydreams to be real.”
“So maybe we really did do this together?”
“Maybe. Probably. It makes the most sense of anything we talked about and your Kyra is very clever.”
“Margrada’s a lot smarter than I ever realized too.”
“Hard not to imagine there wasn’t something like fate steering us together then,” Nia said, gesturing downwards towards the roots of the great trees. “Both you and me, and us and the women we’ve met.”
“Yeah. I can’t envision a life without Kayelle in it anymore. Or Naosha. Or Marianne.”
“Even if we did get stuck back in old bodies, I’d still want to bug Pelegar for lessons. And your Mom. And Belhelen is a delight to go drinking with. Horgi and Grash would probably hunt me down if I disappeared too.”
“I think that’s why I want to go ahead with this,” Yasgrid said, the words leading her to the belief that was growing inside her. “The song we talked about? It’s more than just proving that we are who we appear to be now. It’s about understanding what we share. It’s scary to think we might find something we don’t like there, but I know you and you know me. All the ugly, small, mean stuff, we can already see in each other.”
“I can see a lot of good stuff too,” Nia said. “A lot more than the things that trouble you.”
“Same,” Yasgrid said. “Which is why I think we can dare this. More than proving ourselves to everyone else though, I think if we can understand the connection we have, we can make sure that if it ever does break, we’ll know how to fix it.”
Side B – Nia
Nia felt Yasgrid’s idea settle in like a warm, comforting blanket.
What they had together still felt like a miracle and miracles weren’t the sort of thing one could go around fixing. Except miracles also weren’t the sort of thing which could break.
“You’d think with all the stuff we’ve done, we’d already understand everything about this,” Nia said, gesturing to the two of them. “I mean, I’ve seen things while Shatter Drumming that I know are more than my mind has been able to retain. And you’ve discovered abilities I don’t think anyone ever even guessed an Elf could have.”
“That’s part of what will make this work, I think,” Yasgrid said. “Even if we were perfect fits for our old bodies once, how could we be anymore? I’m not the person I was before I walk the Darkwood. Sure, I could picture getting stuck in a Stoneling body again, but I don’t think the part of me that’s part of the Darkwood could real squeeze inside something that didn’t feel like home.”
“That’s true. If I tried to play the Shatter Drums as an Elf…and I would absolutely do that if I got stuck as one…I can’t picture going into another Resonance moment and not coming out as a Stoneling. As this version of me. I mean, we hold on to who we are as the magic washes through us because otherwise it would wash us away.”
Nia paused for a moment. She’d missed something obvious.
“The Shatter Drums would wash me away if I didn’t hold onto myself.” The idea rang in her, quieting so many doubts and answering so many unasked questions.
“They teach us that before we’re allowed within an arm’s length of one,” Yasgrid said, nodding in agreement.
“They would have washed me away if I was trying to hold onto someone that I’m not,” Nia said and saw understanding dawn in Yasgrid’s eyes too. “But the person I was holding onto, the person I was pretending to be, was you. Or the you that you’d left behind.”
“And we have played together before,” Yasgrid said, picking up the thread of Nia’s idea and running with it. “And I was ‘pretending’ to be you. But you can’t pretend away a Resonance. What’s there has to be true for it to endure. Which means we really don’t need to do this for ourselves at all. We already have our proof.”
“At dawn tomorrow, let’s call people together and let them know what we’ll be playing,” Nia said.
It wasn’t going to be a test of who they were or the bond between them.
It was going to be something far more important.