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Side A – Yasgrid

Was it accurate to say that ‘people were burning’ if they seemed to be enjoying it? What about if they were engulfed in flames but didn’t appear to actually be ‘on fire’? Yasgrid hadn’t expected needing the answer to that question when she got up in the morning, but it hadn’t even taken until midday for it to arise.

“That is real flame though, isn’t it?” Nia asked. “I mean, it smells like all the food they’re handling is actually burning up, and those steaks do not look raw at all anymore.”

The ‘burning people’ were dancing around a central table inside the the flaming house. As they spun around the table, they lifted various pieces of food from it, not to consume themselves but to offer to the skies above them. Which was a significant relief. Yasgrid had been delighted to discover that the delicious aromas which were wafting out of the flaming building was not the scent of either Elven or Stoneling flesh roasting, but rather what seemed to be a finely prepared meal being rendered into something perhaps a bit overcooked. 

“But their hands do,” Belhelen said, pointing to one of the dancing Stonelings whose pale skin was neither blistered nor darkened at all by the flames. 

“And the building itself seem to be fine too,” Marianne said. “The roof should be falling in if it was really as completely consumed by flames as it looks to be.”

“Has anyone told the Roadies yet?” Margrada asked.

“This is a Drumming problem for now,” Osdora said.

“But if the drums…?” Nia started to ask and cut herself off when Osdora gestured to the other side of the street where a trio of drums were sitting behind a protective barricade of crates. “How were you able to get them out of that though?”

“Just got a little singed. The fire hadn’t spread as much when we first got here,” Osdora said.

“Since this doesn’t seem to be your doing, that brings us to the next question,” Gossma said. “Any idea if you can do something about this?”

She was looking at Nia but Yasgrid could feel the groups attention turning to her.

“I…I probably shouldn’t,” Nia said, which drew incredulous stares from everyone except Naosha.

“We’ve got drums right over there,” Margrada said. “We wouldn’t need to fight the Roadies for one this time.”

“I know,” Nia said. “What I don’t know is what I’d be doing to help. I mean, I could try, or we could try because let’s be real, you’re the only reason most of our songs have actually worked, but this isn’t a calamity that requires whatever drastic actions might work.”

“Wait, you’re being offered a Shatter drum and you don’t want to play?” Margrada asked, before turning to Yasgrid. “Did she fall all the way down from the peak?”

Nia punched her.

“Of course I want to play. In fact I had an idea for a rhythm I wanted to try out with you that has this nice morning sunrise feeling to it. I was thinking we could…no, wait. What I’m saying is, there’s Shatter Drumming, which is amazing, and there’s using the Shatter Drums to do new magical stuff and those are not the same thing. They’re both fantastic, but one of them is fun and the other is tempting and ‘tempting’ can lead to some really bad decisions, so, yeah, we can try to drum this away, but maybe it’d be smarter to understand what’s going on first?”

Osdora flashed a curiously smug smile at Gossma who scowled softly and handed over a trio of coins as though a bet had perhaps been settled.

Side B – Nia

Nia wasn’t surprised that people had bets about her, though Osdora laying her money on Nia being sensible was more touching than she’d expected.

“The same is true for me,” Yasgrid said. “I know sorcery can do all sorts of amazing things, but ‘all sorts’ means ‘all sorts’ and ‘amazing’ applies to both good or bad results.”

“Has anyone tried speaking with the…uh…flame people?” Kyra asked as she wandered up to the group with a collection of steaming mugs to hand out.

“They don’t appear to be capable of hearing us,” Marianne said.

“Grabbing them is a bad idea too,” Belhelen said. “That fire isn’t burning them or the building but it’ll burn anything else it seems.”

Which put it solidly outside the realm of anything natural, and therefor probably squarely in Yasgrid’s territory.

But Nia had been right.

This didn’t feel like something of hers.

“How about poking them with a stick?” Nia asked. “Has anyone tried that yet?”

“With a stick?” Belhelen asked.

“No. We haven’t tried that,” Marianne said.

From the crowd which had gathered, someone produced a Stoneling sized mop handle and offered it to Nia. The flames were shiny and pretty and no one seemed to be getting hurt, so they made for a fascinating spectacle but none of the bystanders were eager to be the ones to test that ‘no one is getting hurt’ part.

Nia glanced around with an expression that asked why she had to be the one to implement her idea, but that of course was the answer.

Yasgrid met her gaze with a shrug. The mop handle was a lot easier for Nia to maneuver, otherwise Yasgrid would have offered to take the task from her.

With an exaggerated sigh and shake of her head, Nia approached the open doorway to the one family house and extended the mop handle handle past the flame covered archway.

Yasgrid watched the wood burst into flame, but Nia had apparently been expecting that since she didn’t jerk her hand back. Instead she watched as the flames played all around the mop handle, but only the part which had passed the door’s threshold.

In the living room beyond the door the Stonelings and Elves who were wreathed in flames took notice of the incursion. None of them stopped dancing but as they passed by the doorway, each made a beckoning gesture, calling those who were outside to join them.

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