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Side A – Nia

How Marianne had managed to collect a relatively complete accounting of both Kyra and Yasgrid’s experiences over the last several months was a question Nia knew better than to bother worrying about. For one thing Marianne had been hanging around with Naosha and so had been able to study under a master of information retrieval. Also, there was the small detail that Marianne had been held captive by Elshira as well.

Which was almost certainly where the initial bulk of the information had come from. Elshira had thought she’d captured Naosha M’Kellin to use as leverage over the Bearers. The chance that Naosha hadn’t engineered that outcome was next to zero, and the most obvious purpose for it would have been to learn every detail of Elshira’s plans and everything Elshira knew about Yasgrid and Kayelle.

It was possible that Nia was overestimating her mothers prowess, but she was also keenly aware of the wide array of people who’d underestimated Naosha and how drastically bad of an idea that occasionally proved to be.

“Wow, they really got put through it, didn’t they?” Belhelen said as Marianne’s tale caught up to the present.

“I did what I could, but all that amounted to was moral support really,” Nia said.

“You did quite a bit more than that,” Marianne said. “Including rescuing us, for which I am both grateful to you and impressed with your mother.”

“She knew I was going to do something like what I did? How? I didn’t have any idea I could do that before I tried!” Nia said.

“I don’t think she understood the exact mechanism – in fact, I sincerely doubt anyone in the Darkwood ever conceived of giving a Trouble’s heart a Shatter Drumming beat. Naosha knew that you would come for us though. You, Kayelle, and Yasgrid. Elshira promised to use us to spawn troubles to kill you all but I never saw Naosha so much as blink at the notion.”

“That was while Yasgrid was off looking for Kyra though, right?” Belhelen asked.

“She was looking for Elshira, mostly,” Nia said. “She wanted to find Kyra, and eventually Marianne and Naosha when she learned they’d been captured too, but she knew the key to that was finding Elshira.”

“Could she have beaten Elshira though?” Belhelen asked. “If she’d found her alone?”

“I think that depends at what point their meeting occurred,” Marianne said. “Obviously, as she is now, the answer is a definitive yes.”

“It is? I mean, thought a lot of what happened was between the Shatter Drummers and the Elves?” Belhelen glanced over at Nia for confirmation.

“We played our part,” Margrada said, “But there were things going on that we weren’t a part of. I got to catch glimpses of it in what Nia was doing, enough to know that if they’d failed, we would have been in serious trouble.”

“What do you mean? What could Elshira have done to us?”

“She led your gods to dance to her tune,” Marianne said. “Yasgrid helped make sure that didn’t happen to the rest of us.”

Side B – Yasgrid

The prospect of searching out Naosha M’Kellin wasn’t a worrisome one for Yasgrid. Whatever their blood relation was or was not, Yasgrid couldn’t help but feel a kinship with the woman who was perhaps the only other Elven sorceress in the world. 

They weren’t the same of course. Yasgrid knew that only too well. What she’d learned from the Troubled Hearts, and the Nightmares, and the Darkwood itself let her reach beyond the world where Naosha’s gifts connected her to the world and the people in it on a more profound level than Yasgrid guessed anyone would ever really understand.

“Would you like to hold my hand?” Kyra asked as they approached the crystal rimmed portal which had replaced one of the fountains in Blue Falls.

“If you would be comfortable with that?” Yasgrid said.

“There are a few Fate Dancers watching us,” Kyra said. “So yes, I would be delighted to hold your hand. Especially since it looks like you could use that?”

Yasgrid held out her hand to take Kyra’s and noticed the small shake in it.

She wasn’t nervous about meeting Naosha, but the location was nibbling away at her nerves.

“I’m being silly,” she said. “But I still appreciate this.”

Whether she meant Kyra’s steadying hand, or that Kyra was coming with her in the first place was something Yasgrid didn’t feel the need to elaborate on. It was both, and Kyra seemed to know that from the gentle smile which graced her lips.

“It’s probably important that we get to be silly with each other,” Kyra said. “And also that I get to scandalize Fate Dancers at every opportunity.”

“Scandalize?” Yasgrid said. “If that’s our goal, then I have a number of suggestions I could make.”

“We don’t need to try all that hard,” Kyra said. “At least not yet. The Fate Dancers are, I have come to understand, quite easy to shock. They’ll be convening a Council meeting over ‘what to do about this travesty’ before nightfall unless I miss my guess.”

Yasgrid laughed at the image and let Kyra pull her forward.

“Do you think any of them will quit?” she asked, imagining the Fate Dancers collapsing as a society to distract herself as they walked through the portal.

The crisp mountain air washed over Yasgrid as so vast a wave of nostalgia that the sleeping hearts stirred in unison. A few slow breaths lulled them back to their slumber and let Yasgrid center herself enough to begin believing she’d returned.

“Do you need a minute?” Kyra asked.

“No. I’m good. This just feels surreal,” Yasgrid said. Gray Rift hadn’t been that familiar to her before. She could recall only a single trip to it with her mother. Nonetheless, Yasgrid was pretty sure it hadn’t looked anything like it currently did.

Nor did the crowds since Yasgrid was fairly certain she would have remembered seeing a hundred-ish Elves minging with a like number of Stonelings.

Which raised the question of how they were ever going to find the Elf they were looking for.

“And they are right on time,” Naosha said, answering the first of many question for Yasgrid.

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