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Side A – Nia

Nia hadn’t expected the show of support from the other drummers. She’d mostly just been trying to break Grash and Horgi out of the doomed mindset. From how the two Roadies exchanged glances, it occurred to her that Roadies tended to settle a lot of their disputes with punching, and that being outnumbered was not, by any measure, a deterrent to them.

“Not here though,” Osdora said. She didn’t have to point at the drum Grash was carrying. All she did was glance at it and the two Roadies sobered up.

“Yeah. Not here,” Grash said.

“And we guess it wouldn’t hurt to talk about it,” Horgi said. “What’s done is done.”

“We rushed it the first time,” Grash said. “Should probably learn from that.”

“What can you tell us of what went wrong?” Naosha asked, once again in High Quand which placed the emphasis of the question on accepting that there would be parts of the total answer which could not be conveyed due to limits placed on the Roadies.

It was either that acceptance or the fact that she was speaking in a language few Stonelings had cause to use regularly which caused the Roadies to seem to overlook or ignore that an Elf was the one making the request.

“The drum…,” Horgi began, “the one, uh, Nia I guess, the one she played in the Calling. It turns out it was special.”

His choice of Low Quand allowed his to speak with less specific declaratives. It sounded more natural to Nia’s ears but she didn’t miss the layer of obfuscation it allowed. Obfuscation which, to be fair, was probably required by whatever code the Roadies lived by.

“Special before she played it, or special because of what it did?” Margrada asked. She shared a glance with Nia which showed that she was just as ravenously curious as Nia was to learn more about the drums.

Grash gave a rueful smile at the question.

“Yes. And No,” he said. “It’s something we, uhm, debate.” Where the ‘debates’ likely involved the loss of teeth and bruises which lasted for weeks.

“The important thing is that drums like that, they’re supposed to have special handling,” Horgi said.

“And you didn’t have the chance to perform the proper honors because we rushed you out to the Battle of the Bands,” Osdora said.

“Did you? That’s so unlike you. Rushing things, who could have imagined?” Gossma said. 

It wasn’t exactly an appropriate moment for humor, as Osdora’s scowl shouted. Horgi and Grash seemed to approve though, which was all Nia needed.

“Is it just the time that’s gone by that would make performing the usual honors you’d offer impossible?” Belhelen asked. “I mean if it’s just something like the setup or the cost, that’s something we could…”

“It’s not the cost,” Grash said. “The echoes have faded.”

“Yeah. It’s been so long now, we’d never capture them,” Grash said.

“That might be something I could help with too,” Yasgrid said and all eyes turned to her.

Side B – Yasgrid

Yasgrid has used the word ‘might’ very intentionally. Finding the long faded echoes of a single drum would have seemed impossible to her half a year earlier. The fact that it still seemed impossible was a sign that making any promises relating to it would be cruel at best.

But the idea intrigued her.

Frost Harbor was too far away for her to try anything at the moment of course. And it was noisy. Would her own memories work against her there? Returning to her old home would certainly be distracting. She imagined trying to work her magic there. Without the Darkwood?

She was clearly capable of working magic on her own. Relocating everyone together had proven that.

But the sort of deep meditation that she’d need in order to hear the faded echoes a drum from half a year away? That would have been so much easier in the Darkwood. She wasn’t certain why. The Darkwood just felt…it just felt more like home? Could she find a place in Frost Harbor again?

“It’s too late for that. Once the Last Silence descends, there’s nothing we can do,” Grash said.

“There are other rites, lesser ones, for when we screw up like this,” Horgi said. “They’re not as good, but they’re something….sometimes, I guess.”

“They’re always something,” Kyra said. “All rituals and rites are. Yours especially.”

“You’ve never heard us,” Grash said, waving Kyra’s words away.

“<Asthock> <Histogoth> <Malinsza>,” Kyra said, each word reverberating strangely in Yasgrid’s ears. Kyra wasn’t speaking Low or High Quand. It was something else.

But it was something that Yasgrid’s soul seemed to know. Or have known. For a very long time.

“Stop.” Horgi and Grash spoke together and instantly as soon as they understood what they were hearing.

“How?” Grash asked.

“And from who?” Horgi asked.

“From versions of you who you will never be,” Kyra said.

“No. We need to know,” Grash said. “Who told you that. Where were you?”

“No one living has spoken those words to me. No one has shown me the…,” she paused and selected something other than the proper noun she was about to use. “Prayer, yes let’s go with prayer, they are a part of.”

“Kyra was formerly a member of a group with the ability to perceive possible futures,” Naosha said.

“Formerly,” Kyra agreed. “The futures I saw then are ones which will never be now, but, as I’ve mentioned, seeing the future was rarely useful for predicting what was to come. It was far more often valuable for what could be learned from situations which never come to pass.”

“How much have you seen?” Horgi asked.

“Enough to know that your efforts have much greater impact than you understand,” Kyra said. “The Last Silence you spoke of? My former people acknowledged something similar. We called it the Final Echoes. We would chase them far beyond what others understood as the end of something. That was one of our great secrets. That we understood those we’d lost, and understood what losing someone meant. We stop hearing the ones we are close to far sooner than their echoes fade from our lives.”

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