Side A – Nia
Nia knew that pushing forward with her plans wasn’t a great idea. The chance to catch people while the spontaneous festivities were winding down was a supremely attractive proposition because it would give them a fantastically large audience from both the mountains and the woods.
But there was no denying that she and Yasgrid needed to rest.
It was hard to accept that though.
She could feel the current of history that they’d been riding. All of her decisions had been her own, but they’d been shaped by circumstances which were so much vaster than either her or Yasgrid. Leaving that surging torrent behind to float in calm waters over to the side of the events which were still playing out felt wrong.
Nia knew part of that was her being terribly unreasonable. ‘Craving excitement’ wasn’t the best or wisest course of actions pretty much ever.
Even ‘helping people’ wasn’t always the brightest course of action. Nia could feel the space they’d left open and the good their song could do. She believed in the example she and Yasgrid could give people and could imagine the good that inspiration might bring to the world. But ‘feelings’ and ‘beliefs’ could often conceal the things one didn’t want to notice.
Like how tired she still was.
And how lucky they’d been.
And how very wrong things could go if things didn’t play out how she was picturing they would.
“The song we all played and the magics Yasgrid unleashed gave everyone a fresh start,” Nia said. “From what Kyra said, we’re, in a metaphysical sense, cut off from our pasts, which means we can start anew and choose new ways to live.”
“But most people won’t,” Margrada said, in synch with Nia’s thoughts as she more and more often seemed to be.
“Most people won’t, and some people, maybe a lot of people don’t need to,” Nia said. “But I don’t think Yasgrid and I are special.”
“You’re completely wrong about that, but go on.”
“I don’t think we’re unique in terms of being better suited to other lives than the ones we were living,” Nia amended.
“That I can believe.”
“Neither of us could have imagined the lives we’re in now though, and I think that’s what people need to see, and what we can show them,” Nia said. “That other lives are possible. That even making as vast a change as we did, can work out. That more is possible than what they’ve ever dreamt of before.”
“And you want to play that for them now? Before everyone has a chance to scamper away back to lives they knew and were comfortable with?” The wheels of deep consideration were turning behind Margrada’s eyes.
“It feels like we should. Like if we don’t, we’ll be missing an opportunity that won’t come again.”
“Honestly? I’m surprised you’re not playing already.”
“Without you?”
“Okay, I’m surprised you didn’t wake me up earlier.”
“You needed sleep. And I wanted you to make sure you were clear headed when I asked you if this really is a good idea?”
Side B – Yasgrid
Yasgrid wanted to talk to Kyra about a wide constellation of things. There’d been dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of things she had wondered about as she roamed the Darkwood. Predictably however, those had all fled her mind and the one thing she could talk about, and knew she probably should, she found herself reluctant to bring up.
“You know, it’s funny, I can’t see Nia when she’s with you,” Kyra said as they walked together down one of the long winding stairs which descended towards the forest floor. “If I really concentrate I can manage it, but mostly I just hear her voice as a whisper.”
“That sounds like it would be disconcerting,” Yasgrid said, trying to picture her and Nia’s conversations from an outsider’s perspective.
“It should be, I suppose,” Kyra said. “I think a lot of things that have happened should probably worry me more than they do, but I can’t help feeling a little glad that they don’t.”
“Things like what?” Yasgrid couldn’t help but notice how different Kyra had become. The former-Fate Dancer had lost her position, her people, and her role in society, and yet Yasgrid felt a warm and open peacefulness underlying each of Kyra’s words.
“I used to know where my life was going. Not just in a general sense of being part of the Fate Dancers and having a role to play in their hierarchy, but in a real, tangible sense. I told you how seeing the future is an uncertain art at best, right? That applies mostly to specific events and the results of individual decisions. The general shape of a Fate Dancer’s life is something we learn to grasp early on.”
“How much of what happened with us, you and I, did you know was coming?” Yasgrid asked.
“Nothing. You weren’t, as far as I knew, a part of my life at all. If I’d known anything about you, I never would have stabbed you. I don’t think I even would have been able to.”
“I recall you had reasonably good cause for that. Didn’t I stab you first?”
“No,” Kyra said, though Yasgrid couldn’t tell if she was rejecting the notion that Yasgrid had stabbed her or the idea that it justified stabbing Yasgrid back. “You confused me. A lot. When I hurt you though, I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. That was why I hate to cut that bit out of your Fate. Even though you were someone who shouldn’t have meant anything to me.”
“Because you couldn’t feel me in your future?”
“Because I couldn’t feel anyone in my future. Well, not anyone. My future was shaped to have friends, comrades, certainly a dalliance or two which wouldn’t have worked out despite both parties knowing they were doomed from the start. It wasn’t going to be a terribly important life, or I suppose a terribly fulfilling one, but it would have been tolerable. I would have been useful and respected and ultimately died at a reasonably old age of something typical.”
“So I was better than tolerable I take it?”
“Oh no, you were absolutely intolerable.”