Side A – Nia
Nia saw an image conjured before her. A new and shining form, resplendent as only the union of two such dissimilar peoples could be. Better than the mold the gods had cast any of them from, wiser and stronger, everything they could hope to be.
It was a tempting vision. What the divine song was offering to all who played it was an instant transcendence. No personal struggle, no careful refinement, just the simple decision to cast off what they were and embrace a singular vision of the best they could be.
Nia slammed a hand onto her drum, intuition riling her spirit up into a wall of resistance.
Had she imagined she would be defending the singers and drummers alone?
Had she thought that it was on her to make sure people could see through the lie of the image before them?
Had she believed she was somehow special enough that everyone was relying on her?
Well, no. That would have been really conceited. And egotistical. And…
She wanted to object that there had been things she’d been the first to do or notice.
Arguing with a crowd the size of the one in Gray Falls and Gray Rift was just a trifle difficult though, especially when they were already on your side.
The song which was still a part of its performers wound around the image of divine unity and stripped away the brilliant, ever-enticing glow to reveal the bland, hollow beneath the exterior.
Could they become something more than they were? Certainly. Within the song both singers and drummers saw proof of that within themselves. They were all more than they’d been, but what they’d become was built on who they were.
Nia was a drummer because she’d given voice to the passion that had boiled within her all her life. Passion, she’d held as much as an Elf as a Stoneline, and her time as one was every bit as precious as her time as the other had become.
If she had loved Marianne so desperately and clumsily, she would have been a different person when she met Margrada. Maybe a person Margrada wouldn’t have loved in return. Maybe a person who wouldn’t have loved Margrada, or who would have loved Margrada less and someone else more?
The ‘mistakes’ she’d made with Marianne and with the other crushes she’d felt had brought with them perspectives on who she was and who she wanted to be. Where her courage had failed her, she’d learned her limitations. Were those limitations she could accept? Were they ones she could fight to overcome? Were they ones that existed to shield her from real harm? Discovering the truth behind those questions was a task only she could undertake, and involved choices that only she had the right to make.
Behind her a chorus of voice and drums rose in agreement.
Within the song a newfound deity was rising, but its majesty was far overshadowed by the collective wisdom and experience of the mortal hearts whose beats had called it forth.
Side B – Yasgrid
Yasgrid yearned to turn to gaze upon her divine reflection. It would be so much easier to have a roadmap towards a triumphant future.
Except that the woman she was back-to-back with wasn’t her future.
“Am I not?” her divine reflection asked.
“You can’t be,” Yasgrid said, releasing a long sigh of acceptance. “I haven’t written my future yet.”
“But I am yours,” her divine reflection said. “If not your future, then your present, or simply yours.”
“Is that what you desire?” Yasgrid asked. Her magic seemed lost to her but after a moment’s searching within and finding nothing, she reached outwards and discovered that rather than her magic being inside her, she was, for the moment, within it.
“What I desire is what you desire,” her reflection said.
“And which of my desires would that be?” Yasgrid asked, and gestured out to the endless dark which surrounded them. “I have so many, and only a few would I choose to act upon.”
“You wish to bring the world together. You wish for harmony and unity, vitality and joy, calm and serenity. I am the guide and goal of all those things.”
“So, oh wise, all knowing one, what do you feel in harmony with?” Yasgrid asked, feeling a presence that was both comforting and horrifying in the darkness.
“The world, and everything in it!” the reflection said.
“You’ve found harmony with all the world?” Yasgrid asked, feeling only a trifle bit cruel.
“Yes! There is harmony in everything.”
“Even in murder?”
“No, that’s an aberration.”
“What about hate?”
“No. No, that is the antithesis of what we strive for.”
“Perhaps there’s harmony is distaste then?”
“Distasteful things promote disharmony.”
“I suppose the same is true of disagreement as well?”
“If left unresolved, but that is what we can change. We are not longer bound by the limits we had. We can know and understand each other perfectly, you need only let go of the limitations which have held you back and forge a new world.”
“And in this new world, all will agree?”
“Of course. There will be harmony and joy for all!”
“Even those who are forced to change their minds?”
“No one will be forced to do anything!”
“Oh, so you’ll just leave out anyone who doesn’t agree then?”
“No! No one is left out! No one is forced to do anything. No one is…”
“Going to be happy with everything that makes you happy,” Yasgrid said to the woman who looked not like a reflection of her anymore but close to a portrait of the child she’d once been.
“But they should! Things could be so much better for everyone!”
“Things would be so much better for you. If the world was a quiet, a calm, and better at communicating what it wanted?”
“Yes.”
“Some people need to shout for joy. Some people need to be excited. And no one knows exactly what to say at all times. Even anger has it’s place.”
“But it hurts.”
“It does. It really does. And I’m pretty sure it always will,” said the former Trouble who stepped forth, called forth from the Darkness by Yasgrid’s gentle request. “Hello fledgling. My name’s Lunacy. Why don’t we find a nice little glen to haunt for bit while we work out who you’d like to be without all this racket.”