Side A – Nia
The world returned to Nia as it always did but she was no longer sure it was a world that she knew.
“What…what was that?” She looked over to Yasgrid because there wasn’t anyone in the world who was more likely to be able to answer that question.
But Yasgrid looked just as confused as Nia felt.
“You didn’t meant to do that, did you?” she asked, tracing her hand through the air as though they could catch the ripples of the Shatter beats Nia had struck.
“No. Or, I mean, yes, that’s what I was trying to do but ‘trying’ is too strong a term there. I didn’t think it would work! It’s not supposed to work. Is it?” Nia wracked her memories for any hints Pelagar or Osdora might have given that the Shatter drums weren’t necessary, but nothing they’d said seemed to suggest that at all.
In fact, given the reverence the Roadies showed for the drums rather than the drummers, Nia couldn’t accept that the Shatter drums were at all an optional part of Shatter drumming.
“I think that depends on what you mean by ‘it’,” Yasgrid said. “Was that Shatter Drumming? I think it was, but I suspect my mother would disagree, and I know Horgi and Grash would agree with her.”
“It sure felt a lot like Shatter drumming me to me. Should I try it again?” Nia asked, because that sort of terrible idea was becoming her stock in trade.
“Do you need to?” Yasgrid asked, the mischief in her eyes suggesting there was an intuitive leap Nia was few steps away from making.
“Is there a reason I shouldn’t?” Nia asked, sensing that there wasn’t a simple danger in more drumming. Whatever Yasgrid had noticed might still be dangerous but in maybe in a more philosophical sense?
“Are you drumming to prove whether you’re a drummer?” Yasgrid asked in return and just from the phrasing Nia understood.
“Oh certainly. After all, if I drum enough magic into the world, I’ll definitely be able to determine whether I’m a drummer or not.” Nia mentally chided herself for falling into the trap of doubting herself as a drummer yet again, even if it was only for a moment or two. “Why would your mother be uncertain though? She knows what it’s like to drum even more than I do. Wouldn’t it be obvious to her too?”
“Obvious that you were doing magic? Yeah, definitely. That’s obvious to anyone who hears you play. Stonelings are largely used to that so no one gives it much mind, which is why I think they missed how your drumming isn’t exactly the same as other peoples.”
“It is drumming though, Shatter drumming, no matter what the Roadies might think,” Nia said, reaching for the confidence she knew she’d earned over the last half year.
“The Roadies would acknowledge that it was the same too, but I think they’d want to call it something different, not as a slight but to acknowledge that what you’re doing is outside their purview.”
“If not theirs, then whose purview is it?”
Side B – Yasgrid
There was really only one answer to Nia’s question, just like there’d only been one answer to the similar question Yasgrid had asked herself.
“There’s only one person who can truly answer that,” she said, wondering if any others were going to try at some point?
The Fate Dancers, to pick an unpleasant example, were likely to have some thoughts on the matter of someone for whom the entire world was a Shatter Drum. Yasgrid considered running that question by Kyra but the far better idea of having Nia run the question by Kyra occurred to her instead.
“Me?” Nia asked. “But I’m barely a drummer. I mean, I am one, but no one’s making the mistake that I’m any good at it yet.”
“Except of course all the Gray Fall’s drummers who followed your lead, and all the drummers today who did the same? I have this dim memory of you saying even your fiance followed your drumming, more than once in fact.” It wasn’t so much teasing Nia as bludgeoning her with the a truth she was too shy to admit to herself.
“Those were special occasions,” Nia quibbled.
“That’s true. They were. Now let me think of the last time someone who was ‘barely a drummer’ was allowed to lead a song followed by hundreds of people on a special occasion? I think I have the number, would you care to take a guess at what is it?” Yasgrid did not want Nia to grow overconfident, but the antidote for that was rarely false humility. An honest understanding of ones strengths and weaknesses was the only solid building block self confidence could stand on without inevitably toppling over, generally at the worst of time.
“Shut up,” Nia said with scowl, tacitly admitting the truth of Yasgrid’s claim. “And I get what you’re saying. ‘Testing’ this isn’t really going to tell me anything. Proving that I’m drumming to anyone else is meaningless, especially since the more I learn how to Shatter drum properly and put in the time to do real practice the better I seem to be able to handle myself and this magic.”
“Did it feel exactly analogous to Shatter drumming? It sounded the same but I didn’t feel as much of it as you did.”
“It felt the same to me. I could try beating a rhythm against that tree, but I can kind of feel what would happen already. The beats are there to connect me to the world, and to connect the world and me to something more.”
“It’s like the world becomes a part of you for an instant?” Yasgrid asked, thinking back to her earlier discussion with Marianne and Kyra.
“Yeah, exactly. Is that what being a Sorceress is like for you?”
“Not at all. I’m just the opposite I think. You bring the world into you. I bring myself into the world.”
“Huh, it’s almost like we were meant to be drawn together then?”
“I don’t think it’s something anyone intended though, this feels more like something the world needed of us.”