Side A – Nia
Nia knew that a big part of her new life and her attachment to it was that she was the one who got to choose what she did. After years of looking to her mother or her sister for a template on how she was supposed to behave and what the proper course of action was, being able to choose for herself was a special kind of intoxicating.
Somewhere though she’d managed to pick up one important nugget of wisdom; she didn’t have all the answers, and she didn’t have to. Sometimes, (probably more often than she stopped to consider she had to acknowledge), sometimes it was important to seek other points of view. Other people could, occasionally, have a more grounded and reasonable take on solving the problems Nia was poised to hurl herself against.
Feeling very grown-up and wise therefor, she waited patiently for Margrada’s thoughts on playing for people to show them what Yasgrid and Nia had discovered.
Waiting however was not a skill she’d fully mastered.
But she tried.
Without fidgeting.
As Margrada pondered and turned the idea over in her mind a few times.
Or more than a few times.
In fact…
Was she waiting to respond just to torment Nia?
There was the hint of a smile creeping into the corners of her mouth.
Nia narrowed her eyes, searching for other signs of Margrada was teasing her.
Margrada looked away, too innocently, the smile breaking out from the corners of her mouth.
“It’s a terrible idea,” Margrada said at last, a moment before Nia fully revolted.
Nia opened her mouth to protest but Margrada continued too quickly.
“It’s a terrible idea, because you’re thinking you need to do it alone,” she amended. “Don’t get me wrong. What you and Yasgrid managed to do is incredible, but you’re not the only ones whose lives have changed, or who are finding new lives outside of what they could ever have imagined before. You’re right that this moment is a precious one. People are already talking about ‘how they’re going to get things back to normal’. Elves and Stonelings both. But ‘normal’ is whatever we accept it to be. Good or bad. We’ve got a chance now to make things better than they were, and we’re not the only ones who are thinking of that.”
That…that wasn’t something Nia had been considering.
“Wait, so what are you suggesting? That we try to pull together a concert? Before everyone leaves? Is there time for that?” Nia’s mind began to spin around encompassing the idea and what it would require. How many people could they pull in? Could they find a space big enough? Would anyone try to push back? People wanted things to stay like they were, some people anyways. Would drumming even be the right means of reaching the Elves?
“I don’t think we’d need to try at all,” Margrada said, laying a hand on Nia to bring the spiral of thoughts down into the moment. “I think all we need to do is leave an opening for people to join us.”
Side B – Yasgrid
Yasgrid knew when she was being teased. Belhelen had played that game with her far too often, though, to be fair, Belhelen’s teasing had been more friendly, or even sisterly, than Kyra’s was.
Which intrigued Yasgrid enough to get her to keep her mouth closed and wait.
“I think it was your intolerableness that kept you stuck in my mind though,” Kyra said. “I couldn’t fit you neatly into the boxes you were supposed to go into. You were the Bearer, and everyone knows how terrible they are. Buffoons swollen with unearned confidence and the certainty that they’d been gifted the privilege to decide the fate of the whole Darkwood, no matter how very little they knew of it or the delicate balances which existed between its peoples and the Troubles and the other magics we worked.”
Yasgrid blinked and blanched at that.
“I can’t help but feel like you’ve stumbled on a rather exact description of me,” she said.
“Really? Because literally none part of that would fit for you,” Kyra said. “You showed confidence, but it was backed with a humility I honestly didn’t think Bearers were capable of. You had no interest in dictating the fate of the Darkwood too us either, and you were willing to listen and understand the nature of the Darkwood.”
“And yet I managed to break the Darkwood’s fate, destroy what balances there were, and caused more than a little trouble for rather a lot of people.”
“Do you really see it like that?” Kyra asked with a grin. “Oh, if only I’d been able to believe it. Things would have been so much simpler. I’d be dead most likely, but all that soul searching and the myriad of tormented dreams? I could have just hated you like I was supposed to and we would have been proper enemies, as fate ordained.”
“I’m not sure I like that fate,” Yasgrid said.
“Yes. See. That should have put us eternally at odds. With you in the wrong, and the Fate Dancers clearly in the right.”
Yasgrid couldn’t help but smile at seeing how the conflict, how her own presence, had so disconcerted Kyra.
“But you weren’t. And they weren’t. No matter how I tried to make it so that you were. Every word we spoke, everything you did. All the fates I was able to see with you. You just weren’t what you were supposed to be.”
Kyra’s frustration was only an echo of the past, but it still warmed Yasgrid’s to heart. After all the torment she’d felt, it was comforting to know that she hadn’t been alone.
“I feel like I should apologize for making things so hard for you,” Yasgrid said. “But given how things have turned out, I’m not sure how sincere I could make that apology sound.”
“Exactly! Intolerable just like a I said.” Kyra shook her hands towards the heavens. And not entirely far from Yasgrid’s face. “Intolerable that you be so, so…you. I knew, I could sense I think, that you were going to break me. That the life I’d so carefully put together was going to fall to piece at your slightest touch.”
“Perhaps I do owe you then,” Yasgrid said, feeling the intensity of Kyra’s nearness as much as the intensity of her words.
“You do,” Kyra said and pulled Yasgrid close to claim the kiss they’d both been inching closer towards the whole time.