Side A – Nia
The surge of the song she’d helped build swept past Nia, speaking not over her but with her, answering the divine longing for oneness which had risen at the heart of the performance.
“No magic can make us who we want to be,” the singers and the drummers said through their harmony and rhythm.
“I’m happy with who I am now.”
“I’ve got so much I want to change.”
“I’m good except for…”
“I just want to change a few things but not…”
“I’ve always wondered if I could…”
“I never knew how much I liked being…”
“I thought I wanted something else but I don’t want to lose…”
“I want a fresh start…”
“I want another chance…”
“I’m happy with what I’ve got now, but I want others to understand it more…”
“I thought I was good, but I want to see what other choices there are…”
“I’ll never be okay, but I’d like to be better than this…”
“I just want to make up for who I’ve been…”
“I’ve wasted so much time, I just want to see what I can do with what I’ve got left…”
“I never knew I could do this at all…”
“I’ve learned so much, I want to keep learning…”
“I’m doing it! This is hard, and I’m doing it! I want to try something even harder!”
“I don’t need to change, I just need to rest.”
“Change? Do I gotta?”
So many voices, so many wishes and thoughts, but none of them conflicted with each other because, while they none were the same, each was an expression of the speakers selves, for themselves.
“We don’t need to be perfected,” Nia said, synthesizing their words into the beat she drummed. “And we don’t need someone else to remake us, in their image, or as what they imagine we wish to be.”
The presence born from the heart of the song wasn’t focusing on them anymore, something deeper had distracted it, but a few stray thoughts remained, instinctive challenges to the response from the singers and the drummers.
You only feel like that because you are still limited. If you could see from an enlightened perspective you wouldn’t cling to your limitations. They do you no good. You are letting your failings and your traumas define you.
Nia looked within for where any truth to those claims might be. Was it simply comforting to believe her failings served a purpose? Would she feel differently about her weaknesses once she was no longer held back by them? Could her judgment be trusted on who she wanted to be when that was driven by desires and fears she hadn’t learned to overcome yet?
“What is this but another choice?” Osdora played into the song on her drum.
“Is choosing to give our choice to someone else not also driven by our fears and desires?” Naosha sang.
“We can only choose for ourselves,” they spoke together, each in their own way, “And from choosing, learn and grow.”
And Nia, with a few closing beats of gratitude, stopped playing.
She had her answer.
Side B – Yasgrid
Yasgrid hadn’t forgotten about Lunacy – the “Old Crone” Trouble was a rather memorable sort, and her transformation had been even more so, but Yasgrid had very definitely not been expecting to see Lunacy arrive so deep into the vision she’d conjured. The call Yasgrid had put out had been more of a request for general aid, perhaps a few whispered words or a stray thought or two.
“Who is that?” Yasgrid’s former reflection asked.
They were still standing back to back which let Yasgrid weave her fingers through her reflections.
“She’s a friend,” Yasgrid said, projecting the warmth she felt for the old Trouble.
“She wasn’t though. Not before,” the reflection said.
“No, I was something terrible before. The most terrible of things,” Lunacy said.
“And you want to take me away?” the reflection asked.
Yasgrid could feel walls of divine resistance rising at the thought.
“I do,” Lunacy said. “I don’t believe this space is good for you.”
“Why? I’m safe here!” the reflection said.
“Are you?” Lunacy asked.
“Yes! She would never hurt me. She wouldn’t hurt anyone!” The reflection was so painfully sure of that, despite how wrong it was.
“I’ve hurt people before,” Yasgrid said. “Even ones I don’t regret hurting.”
“But you wouldn’t hurt me?” It was a statement with a draining lack of certainty.
“There are many, many means we have to hurt each other,” Lunacy said. “What would happen to this fledgling if they stayed here, within your magic Yasgrid?”
“I have literally no idea,” Yasgrid said, feeling crushingly new to the possibilities before her. “No, wait, it would hurt. All of us.”
“No! I wouldn’t hurt you either. I’ve never hurt anyone!” the reflection said.
“If I held onto you, I would stunt what you could be, I’d limit you, without trying or meaning to, into something that would fit within me. You wouldn’t be able to be more because I would define the limits of your reality. You’d be a god, but only for me.”
“That might not be so bad,” the reflection said.
“It would mean never connecting with anyone else, when you were born from the desire of Elves and Stonelings to come together. It would mean you would always need to wonder if who you were was anything except a fragment of who I am,” Yasgrid said.
“So I need to go?”
“Not, perhaps, right away,” Lunacy said. “I’m an interloper here too, and Yasgrid’s heart seems big enough to hold us both for a while. Would you feel better if we sat for a cup of tea and spoke for a while? I still intend to spirit you away, but perhaps it would be sensible to get to know each other first?”
“We can do that? But the song?” the reflection asked.
They all took a moment then and listened.
But around them there was only the beating of many hearts.
The song had already ended.