Previous – Next

Side A – Nia

Placing her hands on a drum again was both exhilarating and calmly at the same time. Her heart leapt at the idea of losing herself in a beat once again, while her hands cautioned that she’d put them through an awful lot and there was only so much they would be able to manage without necessitating a much longer recovery period than she wanted to deal with.

“If you feel anything off, you can fade out with a two-two-one-one-one beat,” Margrada suggested, seeing Nia’s hesitation at beginning and partially guessing its cause.

It was good advice too. Having a simple exit strategy, one which would work with almost any beat she came up with, would allow Nia to exit gracefully and intentionally before whatever she was playing got too far away from her.

But Nia wasn’t going to need that.

“I’ll see if I can do a little better than that,” she said, flashing Margrada a smile with enough bravado in it that Margrada looked ready to pull the drum away before whatever madness Nia had in mind could begin.

Of course it was far too late for that, a fact Nia established by beginning her song without further delay.

The first beat was loud. All hesitation left behind. All bravado front and center. This was Nia’s drumming as she’d begun, her drumming as she’d presented herself before the Shatter Band and before everyone who’d heard her play. It was the drumming that felt comfortable to her Stoneling bones and which spoke in the language of the Skyreach Mountains.

The crowd’s chuckles and murmured approval mostly drowned out the guffaws at the simplicity of the beat she’d picked. Every art form has its snobs, and Shatter drumming was no exception, but simple and honest worked for a lot of people and their voices were louder than the rest.

Nia didn’t need to worry about any of them though. This song she was playing for Horgi and Grash. Which made it one of the hardest one’s she’d ever tried. Being loud was easy. She’d spent her life being so quiet that she had sound ready to burst out of her at every moment it felt like. Being herself though? And showing that to anyone?

Her beats changed their tempo. Slower. Less certain.

The song wasn’t failing though.

Each tentative hit on the drum was speaking for her. She fumbled from one beat to the next, searching for where to go, not because she couldn’t find a beat to follow but because she was fumbling and searching to find herself.

The song sounded terrible and Nia’s heart fluttered at showing all the mistakes, all the uncertainty that she felt. It grew quiet and soft, as she’d been quiet and soft, and Nia felt tendrils of ice creeping down her fingers.

Was she failing? Had she already failed? The stuttering beats asked if she should even be sitting at a Shatter Drum.

They had to. Because she’d asked herself that so many times.

In between one shaky beat and the next, Nia looked up. Should she use Margrada’s suggested exit? Should she simply stop to accentuate the uncertainty she felt? Was she done?

Of course not.

Side B – Yasgrid

Had Nia been a Stoneling her whole life? Had Yasgrid been an Elf? Did they feel like they belonged where they wound up because they truly weren’t what people had thought they were?

Yasgrid shrugged.

“That could be true, but I don’t think she’s any less your daughter for it,” Yasgrid said.

Osdora smiled broadly at her and Yasgrid rolled her eyes.

“Which means I’m stuck with this one as my Mom too,” Yasgrid added gesturing to Osdora with the wine glass she was holding.

“Pfff, you’d be lost with out me,” Osdora said, hiding her joy in her eyes.

“Literally true,” Yasgrid said. “I don’t think I’ve had the chance to thank you two for getting the Shatter Drummers together. People seem to downplaying that but if we hadn’t had a literal army of drummers backing us up the Stoneling gods might have squished us like a bugs when we fought them.”

There was an unexpected pause in the conversation at that as Osdora looked to Naosha who looked to Gossma who looked to Kyra who simply smiled.

“I’m sorry. I don’t think I heard that right. You were in the Darkwood. I know because I was there too. What do you mean you fought the gods?” Osdora said.

“Oh. Huh. I suppose you didn’t see that part it,” Yasgrid said, only remembering just then that she’d confronted Elshira and the Stoneling gods in the Resonance moment where only Kayelle and Nia had been with her. “Yeah. They sort of tried to drown us in lava.”

“I thought we caught them all?” Gossma said. “How many were there?”

“Uh, all of them I think? Or, a lot, more than I could count,” Yasgrid said.

“Was she seeing the battles we fought with the drummers and the Darkwood’s song? Maybe an echo of that?” Osdora asked.

“I don’t think so,” Gossma said, her gaze sharp and searching.

“It was the Ending of our old Fates, so I can’t recall much about it, but I believe it had something a special space within the beat of the drums?” Kyra said.

“A Resonance? You met the gods in a Resonance? And you’re still here?” Osdora  had risen from her chair and was kneeling in front of Yasgrid inspecting her closely.

“And Endings was there?” Naosha asked. She hadn’t moved but her gaze was no less intense.

“In a manner of speaking,” Yasgrid said.

“And what manner would that be?” Osdora asked.

“We broke it,” Yasgrid said.

“But Endings power remains?” Naosha’s comment would have been a statement but a hint of uncertainty crept into her voice.

“It does. And the soul which was bound within the blade is free now. Huh, I should probably look them up. They might need some help adjusting still,” Yasgrid said.

“Yes, yes, but first, how did you survive that?” Osdora asked, frowning since Yasgrid was clearly still herself but no Stoneling or Elf should have been able to fight the assembled might of the gods and win.

“Endings was broken, or more accurately, freed, and but we were still its Bearers, and the gods had forgotten what that meant.”

“Which was?” Gossma asked.

“That they can end the same as we do,” Yasgrid said.

Previous – Next