Side A – Nia
It was hours later, before sunset and so before the proper partying started in the Roadies camp, but long enough that the ripples from the revelation of the morning’s performance had spread beyond Nia’s sphere leaving her in a pocket of relative calm.
“I love that this is what you’re like when you’re unsupervised,” Kayelle said, gesturing her respect by raising the elven mug in front of her which had been repurposed to hold Stoneling ale an Elf-sized portion of a far better ale than what the Roadies would have available.
“Like what?” Nia asked, sloshing the water she held in her mug. Margrada had suggested pickling one’s tongue with good drink might make the Roadies rotgut vaguely more tolerable, but Nia had to inform her that the horror of the Roadies drink was entirely the point.
“Irresponsible!” Kayelle said with a beaming grin.
“Hey!”
“No. No. It’s good. You know what we were like. We took Endings…or wait, no, that was Yasgrid. Damn, I can’t believe she fooled me for so long. I am a terrible sister.” Kayelle’s frown seemed sincere but was transitory too, fading as the next thought filtered in.
Nia suspected Kayelle was not particularly drunk yet, but Stoneling ale was significantly stronger than common Elven mead, so Kayelle might be a little less filtered than she’d intended to be.
“Yes, terrible older sisters do tell younger ones that they’re irresponsible, so that holds up,” Nia said, and returned Kayelle’s gesture of recognition by raising her water mug.
“See! That! That’s what I mean. You never would have talked to me like that before,” Kayelle said. “Can you imagine what we would have been like if we could have been like this all along?”
Nia could, but she wasn’t sure she liked it.
“If we hadn’t been trying to be mother, I’m not sure who either of us would be now, and I like this me,” Nia said.
“That’s what I’m saying. You’re not crushed by the responsibility I think we assumed we both carried. Responsibility that mother never intended us to have too!” Kayelle said.
“I suppose there is such a thing as setting ‘too good’ an example,” Nia said.
“Which you might be doing yourself too, now that I think of it.”
“How? Oh, wait you mean the Elves who want to learn Shatter Drumming?”
Given the discovery that there was more to the drums than anyone outside the Roadies had known, the requests of the drumming-hopeful Elves had been put on hold for a bit, but it was something Nia suspected she’d need to come back to sooner than later.
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of them,” Kayelle put her mug down and leaned forward. “I was thinking about the Shatter Drummers and the Roadies.”
“What? How have I been an example to any of them? Good or bad?”
“I don’t know. You’ve spent more time here in the mountains than I have, but I think followers probably look the same among the Stonelings as they do among our people.”
“Followers? No one is following me. No one even knows me. Well, I mean apart from a few of the Roadies I’ve hung out with. And there are the drummers from Gray Rift that I led in the Battle of the Bands, and I suppose I’ve played with the Frost Harbor band enough that a few of them have seen what I’ve done, but there were only a couple other drummers who talked to me today about…oh Sleeping Gods, I have followers.”
Side B – Yasgrid
Sometimes using magic was not a good idea. How did Yasgrid know this? More importantly did Yasgrid know this.
Yes. Yes, she did.
She couldn’t provide specific evidence or point to a disaster that had arisen from misusing her magic – she was consciously refusing to consider what she’d done with the morning’s song as falling into that category – she hadn’t woken up the drums, no, who said that, that was stupid – anyways, she couldn’t point to anything specific as to why she felt the need to avoid using magic, but she felt she was being wise to refuse to.
Wise like a sorceress should be.
Like she should be.
“You’re frowning. Nia didn’t use to frown like that. You know I’m not sure how I ever got the two of them confused,” Marianne said.
“I think the physical resemblance may have been at least a little confusing,” Kyra said. “I have it a little easier since I only ever knew this version of her.”
“But she was still pretending to be Nia then, or did she confess to you as soon as you met?” The question was casually asked, but Yasgrid heard the hint of Marianne’s eagerness in collecting the answer.
“Confess to me when we met? No, no. I was horrible when we met. Stabbed her right in the chest.”
“What?” Marianne’s question was sharp but held no overt malice. She was after all bright enough to work out that Kyra’s words were at least slightly misleading.
“To be fair,” Yasgrid said, “I did stab her first.”
“Yes, but Endings didn’t penetrate my flesh…”
“Wait, she did that to you too? That must be the strangest pickup strategy I’ve ever heard of, even more so since it demonstrably worked eventually!”
“I wasn’t trying to pick her up,” Yasgrid said.
“True, she was trying to save me from a Trouble during the Blue Falls battle,” Kyra said. “I, of course, didn’t know that at the time, and my reflexes are, or were, or maybe still are, rather dangerous.”
“I feel it’s worth noting that her next action was to get me safely off the battlefield and then heal me.”
“From a lethal wound?”
“Technically I didn’t heal you,” Kyra said. “I unmade the injury. It’s not something we’re supposed to do, pretty much ever, but killing the Bearer isn’t something we’re allowed to do either. Plus I hadn’t kissed you yet and that would have been a terrible shame to miss out on.”
“Wait, you knew we were going to end up together before the battle?”
“No. Not at all. I just thought you were cute.”
“Um, why aren’t you supposed to unmake injuries? That sounds like a rather useful ability to have.”
“The Fate Dancer techniques for Unmaking something involved cutting the moment of its creation out of the fates of the ones who inflict and suffered the injury. Those gaps can lead to unpredictable things.”
“Like someone becoming a Sorceress?”