Side A – Yasgrid
The dawn came too early.
And the sun was too bright.
It was too nice a day to get out of bed.
Too warm. With too gentle a breeze. With too comfy a bed underneath her.
Yasgrid was going to sleep the day away.
She deserved it. She hadn’t slept in a proper bed in ages. A proper Elven bed. Which was so much better than the Stoneling beds.
For months, she’d spent been on the run in the forest. For months, she’d been gripped with a dread uncertainty. For months, she’d been alone.
“We don’t need to rush any of this,” Nia said, perched on a chair beside Yasgrid’s bed.
“Good,” Yasgrid said. “Let’s do it in a month. Maybe two.”
“Well, we would miss the end of the festivities,” Nia said. “People are starting to wind down finally and get back to their day to day work. Which at this point includes working out what rules people want there to be, or need there to be I guess, for traveling back and forth between the mountains and the woods.”
“That sounds like a whole pile of not our problem,” Yasgrid said, still lingering in the sleepy haze of a night which had gone much too late and a morning which was rather early still.
“Yeah. I checked in with Osdora and my mother and they’ve got it handled. I gathered they’d rather not have us disrupt things any further with all they’ve got on their plates.”
It was a sensible idea.
Yasgrid had already broken not only Endings but the a status quo which had lasted for millenia in the Dark Wood. Nia had brought together rivals among the Stonelings and been instrumental in banishing the gods who had hung over them like a dangling blade. On some level Yasgrid knew the actions they’d undertaken would take generations to work out, so relaxing and letting the work begin was a really solid plan.
And not at all what Nia had in mind.
That was okay though.
There wasn’t much Nia could say that would move Yasgrid from the comfortable lassitude which her body craved so deeply.
“I think Kyra is up by the way. I heard her come to the door earlier. It sounded like…”
Yasgrid could have let Nia finish her sentence, but she’d spent too long searching for Kyra to waste time on second hand accounts.
“It sounded like she was heading over to Gray Rift to see my mother,” Nia finished as Yasgrid grabbed one of the ascending ropes to rise to the room where Kyra had been sleeping.
“That’s…okay, that’s…maybe I should wait for her,” Yasgrid said, hopping from the rope to alight gracefully beside Kyra’s door.
“This afternoon,” Nia finished. “Heading to see my mother this afternoon. Try knocking she might be…”
“She is,” Kyra said. “And she’s glad she waited, though she would have waited longer if you’d wanted to sleep in more?”
Yasgrid cast a glance at Nia, who looked smugly pleased. She definitely loved Nia. Otherwise she would have wanted to kill her.
Side B – Nia
Leaving Yasgrid and Kyra to have some time together, Nia turned her attention back to her good old wagon bed.
It wasn’t anywhere near as soft and warm as Yasgrid’s elven bed was, but, for Nia, it was the most comfortable place in the world.
“We should get up, right?” Margrada asked. “I mean there must be a lot to be done still.”
“There is,” Nia said. “The crow calls woke me up at dawn and I took a little walk. Saw some people. Naosha and Osdora are busy already. Belhelen and Marianne are nowhere to be found. Kayelle’s here too, which, that was weird.”
“Seeing her in person again?”
“Seeing her so small. I mean, don’t get me wrong. She still looks tall in a sense. Compared to other elves. It’s just, she was always my big sister. Who I had to literally look up to. Now she’s barely half my height.”
“Still your big sister though? Right?”
“Yeah. I thought I’d run away from that life, but I didn’t really. I ran to this one. Once upon a time, I wouldn’t have seen any difference between those two things, but now? I’m glad I didn’t lose what I had. Even the parts I didn’t like at the time.”
“So what do they need us for?” Margrada asked, grabbing her shirt and starting to rise.
“They don’t,” Nia said, guiding Margrada back down onto the furs and pillows.
“They don’t need us?” Margrada asked, a hint of concern in her voice.
“Pelegar and Osdora apparently fought off a bunch of people to make sure we’d have some time to rest and recover. No one’s ever seen anyone do what you did and, to quote Pelegar, ‘we damn well want to make sure your girl’s able to do that again’, end quote.”
“Wait, so we actually get to take today off?” Margrada asked, rising up on her elbows.
“That is what the doctor ordered,” Nia said with a smile before adding, “Literally in my case. Doctor Prash said I’m probably still rebuilding my healing reserves and that if I pushed myself he’d tell Osdora and Naosha exactly why that was a bad idea.”
“Huh, a day off, can we…hmm, no I guess getting in some extra training isn’t an option is it?”
“Well…”
Nia had to chuckle at how Margrada’s eyes narrowed.
“You’re not going to listen to your doctor, or your mothers, are you?” It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.
“Yasgrid and I talked about something last night.”
“And you’ve already decided to do it.”
“Oh no, no, no, no,” Nia said, waving her hands in surrender. “Nothing’s decided yet. And we can put it off, there’s no rush. It’s not for us. We…we figured out what we needed to already. About proving which life we’re supposed to be leading.”
“Then what is it that you’ve got in mind?”
“I think we can show everyone else what we’ve learned,” Nia said. “For everyone who’s like we were before the start of the year.”