Side A – Nia
Nia was ready to play. This wasn’t a surprise to anyone present who knew her, least of all Nia herself. The other drummers however? The idea that she was within arm’s reach of a Shatter drum, much less seated at one, was a source of confusion and concern.
“The Roadies let her near a drum again? In her condition? Whose the crazy one here, her, them or me?”
That sentiment came from not one set of lips but dozens. Sensible people would have followed that thought to its logical conclusion and arranged to be as far away from the clearly impending disaster as possible.
Nia chuckled at the observation that there apparently wasn’t a sensible Shatter drummer among the lot of them since no one backed away further than a couple of steps as she did her inspection of the drum.
Strangely, that was the weirdest part. Playing in front of an audience was the whole point of Shatter drumming most of the time. The Roadies had vouched for the Shatter drum though and the thought that she would find something they’d missed was so laughable that it would have seemed insulting to even breath a word suggesting it.
But drummers checked their drums. It wasn’t a suggestion, or a custom. It was an absolute. Nia looking over the drum wasn’t a denial of Horgi and Grash’s claim of its safety, it was a confirmation of her belief in them.
It also bought her a few minutes to wrap her mind around what she was about to do.
Her hands didn’t hurt. Not exactly. They were somewhat numb though. Would that be a problem? For Osdora, definitely not. For Margrada? Not even a trivial one. For Nia though? Maybe. So she would be careful. She didn’t need to play across the horizon or up to the heavens. They just needed to hear her.
The real her and only her.
That was the part she was having problems wrapping her head around.
She did have a personal style to her music. It was simple and childish still. It substituted energy for skill and volume for precision, but it was hers and it was growing.
That part was the hardest to believe. She still felt like nothing more than herself, but the girl she’d been on New Years couldn’t have done what she’d managed the last time she struck a drum. The girl she’d been a month ago couldn’t have managed it either.
So, she had grown. She could see that.
And not just in her drumming.
She felt like who she’d always been, but she wasn’t.
She could play. Despite the numbness, she could play. She could show them who she was. Which was perfect in a sense, given that it was part of what she and Yasgrid had been planning to do in the first place.
The question was, if she was going to show them who she was, who was that anymore?
Side B – Yasgrid
That there were Elves who wanted to try Shatter drumming didn’t come as a surprise to Yasgrid. Given what she knew of the Darkwood, she wouldn’t have been able to believe in their absence. That the Roadies were considering allowing an Elf to try Shatter drumming on the other hand seemed to be sure indication that the world had flipped upside down while she was sleeping and everything was somehow reversed and backwards at the same time.
“Yeah, I didn’t expect it either,” Osdora said, bringing over glasses of Gossma’s Winter Wine for them all as they settled into the newly refurbished seats in the room she was renting.
Each of the chairs had been fitted with small cushions which could be arranged to provide back support closer to or farther from the the edge of the seat. It wasn’t any particular challenge for an Elf, even one as refined as Naosha to leap to the chair’s seat, but the retrofit also included a small step ladder as one of the forward legs to allow for a more graceful ascent.
“I thought I might need to intervene for them,” Naosha said.
“Wait, you didn’t?” Gossma asked, swirling the wine and inspecting it before any of the guests were subjected to it.
“They apparently had a compelling argument,” Naosha said, sipping the wine once Gossma gave the go ahead. “It seems that there were some drums which had been caught in the first song which joined our realms. The ones who volunteered to learn Shatter Drumming did so because they believe they can extract the drums from their current state.
Yasgrid could only nod at that. To rescue a single Shatter Drum, the Roadies would dare almost anything. For the chance to rescue a bands worth of drums? Yasgrid was almost surprised that the Roadies were even bothering to check with Nia at all.
“Will she need our support?” Kyra asked. She was seated comfortably on the same chair Yasgrid had chosen. It was large enough that there was plenty of room for the two of them, which would have been unfortunate, except that Yasgrid wasn’t quite sure she was ready to be cuddling with the woman she was courting in front of her mother just yet.
“She’s got Margrada,” Osdora said, as though Margrada was a magic talisman which would protect Nia from all Shatter drum related dangers.
Of course, given what Margrada had managed to do with a Shatter drum, that wasn’t necessarily all that far from the truth.
“And the Roadies don’t need her to play anything complicated,” Gossma said. “They just need to hear what it sounds like when Nia plays like an Elf.”
“I’m not sure she’ll be able to do that,” Naosha said, a wistful hint of melancholy in her voice.
“She’s had a lot of practice in a short time,” Osdora said. “And she is truly talents. Probably better than I was after my first six months on the drums.”
“It’s not a question of skill,” Naosha said. “She is my daughter, and nothing has or will change that, but when I saw her standing above me in her new body? I have never seen Nia be more truly herself than that. They may ask her to play as an Elf, but I don’t know if that’s something she every truly was.”