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Side A – Yasgrid

The Shatter Drums could speak.

Yasgrid heard that just as clearly as Nia did, but her shock was far deeper than her elven other half. 

“What are you saying,” Osdora asked. She was probably addressing Nia, since Nia seemed to be able to both grasp and articulate what the Roadies were refusing to say.

“Play a drum,” Nia said. “Play a drum and you’ll see. Or maybe not? The last time the drums were feeling chatty did they have a lot to say? No, that’s silly why would I ask that.”

“I am not following any of this,” Belhelen said, and Yasgrid noticed that more than a few of the Roadies seemed to be in full sympathy with her.

“Did you know?” Yasgrid whispered to Kyra.

“That the drums would speak here? Oh, not at all,” Kyra whispered back.

Which meant she was definitely aware that they could speak.

But what did that even mean?

Yasgrid felt the itch to lay her hands on a drum and ask it every question that sprang to her mind. Osdora, Gossma, and a few other drummers were wearing similar expressions.

Did she even need a drum though?

Nope.

She could feel a song waiting on her lips. All it had to be was a subtle little hum and her magic would reach every drum that was present. She could step into a Resonance with all of them at once and have as long as she needed to figure things out.

Was that how sorceresses were supposed to appear wise? Did they take timeouts that weren’t available to other people to ponder situations before things could spin out of control?

Yasgrid couldn’t be sure if that was a common tactic – especially not with Grand Aunt Unzola providing her with no insights whatsoever about how to be a sorceress – not that Yasgrid was disgruntled about that at all.

No, she couldn’t tell if stealing away into a Resonance was a trick others sorceresses used or not, but, in this particular instance, she could tell it wasn’t one she was going to use.

Mostly because ‘stealing’ was the right word for it.

It wasn’t precognition that told her things would go badly if she drew the Shatter Drums into her own private conversation. It wasn’t even intuition. It was empathy.

For the drums to be capable of speaking they had to be aware to some extent. That they had spoken to the Roadies before was more than a guess on Nia’s part – it explained all too well why the Roadies treated the drums as they did. Nia also wasn’t guessing that the drums had asked the Roadies not to share what they knew, since nothing sort of a near-divine request would have been enough to keep a group as large and disparate as the Roadies silent on the most important thing they knew.

Could Yasgrid break open that silence regardless of the drum’s wishes? 

Easily, she suspected. Far too easily.

Was that the relationship Yasgrid wanted to create with the drums though?

Her silence spoke volumes on that score.

Side B – Nia

Nia could have stayed silent.

Probably should have stayed silent.

She was so new to interacting with the drums. So new to interacting with her Stoneling family. Just clueless through and through, and so terribly likely to make mistakes.

Her mother was here too.

She could, no…should, let Naosha handle things. Naosha was fantastic at diffusing problems before anyone was even aware they might be any trouble at all. Nia had let Naosha handle everything before and had never regretted it.

But this time she would.

It wasn’t a refusal to be her mother’s daughter either.

She wasn’t angry at Naosha for always being perfect and right. She’d never recognized that she felt like that before, but the absence of that anger made its past presence stand out rather painfully in Nia’s memories.

“I think I understand what I heard. I can try to explain it, but maybe the Roadies could do a better job of it?” Nia said, answering Belhelen’s confused stare.

“We…,” Horgi started to say and struggled to find the words he’d denied himself for most of his life.”

“I think you should be the one,” Grash said, nodding and gesturing for Nia to continue.

Nia drew in a breath and looked to her mother, who nodded as well. Naosha might have spoken, but this was Nia’s forum. Nia might be more of an outsider than most people knew, but she’d been accepted, by the Roadies, by the other Stonelings, and by the drums themselves, in a way no other outsider ever had been.

Margrada’s hand found Nia’s and gave a soft squeeze of reassurance. Nia paused at that. Margrada had heard the drums first. She was by far the better player. Shouldn’t she be the one to speak? She’d been overlooked for far too long and it was definitely time for…

Margrada shook her head, her jaw clamped tight.

Oh.

Margrada wasn’t letting Nia speak out of deference. Margradas was looking for Nia to speak because, like all of the other Shatter Drummers who’d worked out the implications of what had been said so far, she was a teeny bit too overwhelmed to speak.

“Okay. If I get anything wrong, just hit me okay.” It was an honest offer and at least Horgi and Grash gave an honest nod of agreement in response.

With the freedom to speak as she wished, Nia paused and looked for where to begin.

What did she know?

More than she was aware of. 

There was so much she’d heard. So much that she’d felt. So much that she knew without being fully aware of it.

So she started with what seemed like the most important piece of the puzzle first and let the rest spill out of her, telling herself the story as much as those around her.

“The Shatter Drums aren’t our tools. They’re precious and sacred. We don’t say that because gods aren’t a thing we’ve had particularly good experiences with. But we all know the Shatter Drums are special in a way that transcends any words we might use to describe them.” Those words came easily. She was sure of what she was saying even if she wasn’t certain where it would lead her.

“I think that’s just accepted though. The drums are special, and the Roadies take care of them, but day-to-day, we still work with them as drums. We strike them to call out our music, and draw forth the magic we share, and that’s where our connection to them seems to end.”

Nia paused. She didn’t have the words for this either, not the best ones, so she scrambled together the ones she was able to find and hoped for the best.

“Except it doesn’t. The music we’ve played? The magic we’ve made? The drums weren’t just the instruments we played. They’re our partners. The magic we make and guide? They make and guide it too.”

She paused and let a new idea sparkle up into words.

“They’ve been our silent companions because they wanted to hear our songs. Whenever we play for ourself, we play for them too. I think in coming together like we did here though…I think they’re ready for us to get to know them like they know us.”

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