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Side A – Yasgrid

Yasgrid’s divine reflection didn’t like Lunacy, but Yasgrid could sense that her reflection was growing more intrigue by the offer Lunacy was making.

“Before you go,” Yasgrid said, “there is one thing we should…”

“No!” Lunacy cut her off.

“No what?” Yasgrid blinked in surprise. Lunacy couldn’t be objecting to what Yasgrid had been planning to say.

“You were about to offer her a name.” Lunacy’s tone made that sound like a criminal offense.

“She needs one, or are you just going to avoid calling her anything?” Yasgrid said.

“That is exactly what I am going to do,” Lunacy said. “Up until she is ready to chose a name for herself.”

“I could just choose one now couldn’t I?” the reflection said.

“You could, and you could toss it away later when you find a better one,” Lunacy said. “There’s just one little problem with that.”

Yasgrid sighed. Lunacy was right. Yasgrid wasn’t used to dealing with entities like her reflection, but fortunately someone else was paying attention to the impact even simple gestures could have. 

“Even if you changed to a new name, any name I gave would leave a mark, for lack of a better term,” Yasgrid said.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing? What if I want to carry something of you with me?” the reflection said.

“Oh, you will,” Lunacy said. “You’ve got her name after all.”

Which should have been frightening, but Yasgrid didn’t feel especially worried. There were certainly lots of mischief someone who had her name could conjure with it, but she was not about to start living her life behind a veil of secrets, keeping everyone at a distance lest she be mystically compelled in some manner.

“Lunacy’s right, you can always call on me,” Yasgrid said.

“Isn’t it supposed to work the other way round?” the reflection asked.

“First lesson,” Lunacy said. “There is very little ‘supposed to’ in life. There are expectations. There are lessons that get passed down. There are even rules that are a fantastic idea to follow. Whether something is ‘supposed to happen’ though? That depends on what the circumstance is, and yours my dear are going to take a while to figure out.”

“You may want to get to work on that then,” Kyra said. “I’ve heard that’s the kind of thing that can take a lifetime, or more on occasion.”

“How did…?” Lunacy asked, glancing over to catch Yasgrid’s eye.

“Apologies for the interruption, but things are winding down with the song and Yasgrid may want to hear what’s coming up next,” Kyra said.

She’d walked out of the darkness around them like she was strolling down a street and, while Yasgrid could sense Kyra wasn’t present in any physical sense in the non-physical realm they were chatting in, the tangibility of her nearness was intoxicating.

“Is it okay?” the reflection asked.

“Is it scary?” Yasgrid asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you want to try it anyways?”

“I think so.”

“Then you already have the answer to your question,” Yasgrid said and released her hold on the reflections hands, allowing the outside world to flow back into her senses.

Side B – Nia

Nia felt like she’d been hit with a mallet.

The drums had voices?

The drums, the things she played to invoke a magic which could reshape the cosmos, those drums, they each had a voice?

“Did we hear it wrong?” Nia asked.

Margrada’s smile beamed more brilliant than the sun and the subtle back and forth shake of her head spoke more words than a day long soliloquy could have.

“What did you hear?” Naosha asked with her characteristic gentleness.

“The drums were speaking,” Nia said. “They were a part of the song – not just the beats we were playing, but their own music, their own contribution to the what we were building.”

“That’s not what the drums are though,” Gossma said. “They’re tools. They’re not people.”

“Are you sure of that?” Marianne asked. “I don’t have Nia or Margrada’s ear but I think we can see people who do.”

She gestured towards Horgi and Grash who were advancing through the crowd with a contingent of other Roadies behind them.

“It’s not usually a good sign when Roadies are moving in force like that,” Osdora said, stepping in front of Nia and Margrada seemingly without thought or concern.

“I’m not sure they indeed to cause trouble,” Naosha said, and Nia had to agree. 

There was a lack of menace or hostility to their movements. It was something it had taken more than a few evenings of drinking and brawling with the Roadies to recognize, so Nia wasn’t sure how Naosha had picked up on it, but as ever Naosha seemed to be right. 

Horgi brushed past a drummer with liquid grace, not disturbing the taller Stoneling with his passing. Grash meanwhile waited patiently for an opening to appear before carefully moving forward with the rest of the Roadies in tow.

“Let me talk to them first,” Osdora said. “Even when they don’t mean to start a fight, Roadies have a tendency to break things, particular things like first year drummers.”

Naosha and Marianne needed no convincing. Being outmassed by a couple orders of magnitude by the approaching Roadies they adjusted their position to be well behind Osdora and atop one of the tall Stoneling stools. 

Nia wasn’t terribly concerned for either one of them, in part because neither was foolish enough to pick a fight they didn’t need to be part of and in part because where Stoneling’s held the advantage in mass and reach, Elven mobility and grace was far beyond what even a Stoneling acrobat could match.

“Did you know that was going to happen?” Horgi asked. He’d stopped just outside of uppercut range from Osdora – a mark of respect from a Roadie similar to a deep bow among Elves – but he was speaking directly to Nia.

“The drums?” She wasn’t asking so much as offering confirmation that they were talking about the same thing.

Horgi nodded.

“I did not.” It felt like admitting she’d bumbled into something that could have hurt the drums. Something the Roadies would mark unforgivable. “If I had I would have warned you, or asked if it was okay. I don’t think anything happened to the drums  though. We can give you the, back for inspection to make sure.”

“No,” Grash said. “That’s your drum now.”

“Forever,” Horgi said.

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