Side A – Yasgrid
For all that she knew her divine reflection needed an existence of her own, Yasgrid still felt a pang of regret when their hands parted.
“What if I don’t like it where you take me?” the reflection asked, speaking to Lunacy, though the question was as open to Yasgrid to answer as well.
“You won’t,” Lunacy said. “Not at first anyways.”
“And later?” the reflection asked.
“Later you’ll have other places to compare it to,” Yasgrid said. “Lunacy isn’t going to trap you in her home. In fact I suspect she’ll be taking you on more trips than I ever could.”
“You try spending three centuries haunting the same little house in the woods and you’ll find the urge to get out once in a while every bit as overwhelming as I do,” Lunacy said with a huff.
“Why did you haunt the same house for so long?” the reflection asked.
“Because it was all I could imagine doing. It was what I was – the Trouble lurking in a isolated place. It was all I could be for a while but even after I gained the ability to do more and be more, I stayed there. It was comfortable, knowing everything around me, what I was supposed to do, who I was supposed to be.”
“So why did you leave then?” the reflection asked, drawn in by Lunacy’s frank openness.
Lunacy looked at the reflection with a hint of suspicion but drew in her breath and sighed after a moment.
“I’d love to tell you that it was her fault,” Lunacy said, nodding towards Yasgrid. “When the Bearer catches up with a Trouble, that’s pretty much the end of the line from the Trouble’s point of view. Or it was. Things are pretty different now. Back then though, sure, maybe you could take the Bearer out, if they were new, or tired, or just unlucky enough. Most of the time though, a Bearer was none of those things by the time they found an miserable old thing like me, and most of the time they only found a miserable old thing like me because I’d done something to make them specifically miserable.”
Lunacy paused, waiting to see if the reflection was going to interrupt with a question but the reflection was too focused on listening for that to happen.
“That wasn’t the case when Yasgrid found me though. I hadn’t done anything to her, and she wasn’t looking to ‘End’ me – not like the other Bearers had been at least.”
“She wanted to help you, didn’t she?” the reflection asked.
“Yes, but only in the most annoying manner possible,” Lunacy said.
“What was annoying about it?” Yasgrid protested.
“You made me want to help myself. Do you know how aggravating that is for a Trouble? Or for anyone really? To have to take responsibility for who you’ve chosen to be? I mean, sure, I didn’t have any choice in who I’d been or the terrible things I’d done early on, but making it possible for me to be something else? Making it possible to leave behind the comforting misery of my existence. Giving me a choice, a real one? That is the heaviest of burdens you could ever have given me.”
Side B – Nia
King didn’t seem particular interested in the answer to Nia’s existential dilemma, possibly because he knew and had always known exactly what he was.
“The song will be ending soon,” he said instead, drawing Nia’s attention back to the world around her.
Her moment of tranquility dissolved into the bustle of song winding down and then shattered when she felt Margrada’s arms wrap around her.
“Did you hear the drums!” Margrada’s voice was filled with the kind of glee Nia couldn’t remember hearing there before.
“I heard a lot things,” Nia said, the question of whether she was what she’d grown to thinking of herself as looming in the back of her mind. “Still sorting a lot of it out.”
“Yes, that was a good deal more engaging than I’d imagined it would be,” Naosha said, leaping lightly to stand on an open chair near Nia.
Nia waited for the twinge of embarrassment to shoot through at being “caught” in an affectionate embrace with her girlfriend. It was completely absent though. Being with Margrada felt too ‘right’ and Naosha wasn’t the overwhelming dragon of Nia’s imaginations. They were both family.
“I can’t tell if the Roadies are going to have a complete meltdown over another unprecedented song, or if they’re going to be too happy to care,” Osdora said. She was enjoying a one armed hug from Gossma who had curiously tear glassed eyes.
“That one’s easy,” Margrada said. “Just look at them!”
She pointed beyond the far edge of the drummers and singers to where Horgi and Grash were standing with a cadre of similarly awestruck Roadies.
“We should probably go talk to them,” Osdora said, a hint of nervousness creeping into her voice. “Roadies don’t usually care about what we play too much. If they’re still listening, we may need to talk them down before they get any weird ideas.”
“How much of the song do you think they heard?” Nia asked, an awareness dawning that she might have been deeper into the song than almost anyone else.
“They listened to all of it, I’m sure,” Gossma said. “Everyone here did.”
“Is that what you are asking?” That Naosha knew Nia’s concerns were more esoteric wasn’t surprising, that she didn’t already have the answer however was.
“There was a conversation,” Nia said.
“Between the singers and the drummers,” Gossma said.
“More than that!” Margrada said.
“The singers and the drummers coming together was what we’d hoped for, but there was more,” Osdora said. “There was something beyond the sharing of our tales, something that was underneath the beats and the harmonies, a…a feeling.”
“There was a god,” Nia said. “A new one.”
“Oh there was even more than that,” Margrada said.