Side A – Nia
Nia could feel the surprise around her. From the one who’d tried to hide her mother, to Margrada at the thunderous swell of Nia’s half of their shared song, to the Shatter Drummers who were sitting around her and watching Nia burst alight in golden fire.
Impossible! the one who’d tried to cloak Naosha screamed through the aether as Nia incinerated the gauzy veil of darkness which had cloaked her mother’s location from her.
“Take my part of the song for three beats,” Margrada said, as Nia felt Margrada gathering the strength to match Nia’s fury.
“Sleeping Gods what is she!” Gracella, her new Shatter Drumming friend asked as Nia encourage the blaze around her to spread.
Somewhere lost in all of those reactions, there was another one which Nia would have overlooked if she hadn’t walked alongside Yasgrid for the last several months and felt the lives Yasgrid carried in her heart.
Oh. I am in danger. Maybe this will be the end at last, the Trouble Elshira had sent to destroy her silently screamed. Or was it rejoicing?
Both? Though she couldn’t hear its voice or its thoughts, Nia could feel the Trouble’s trepidation and elation.
Apologies, she told it. You’re trying to kill me and I don’t have time to die just now.
Do I? the Trouble asked.
With the veil separating her from Naosha, Nia did not feel like she had time for a conversation with a servant of her enemy.
Also she needed to spare some of her attention towards carrying Margrada’s part of the song for a short while.
And allowing herself to feel compassion for a creature who was purpose built to inflict suffering and misery on others could only weaken the resolve she’d hammered Elshira’s defenses with.
I don’t think so, Nia said, casting aside her worries and opening her heart as Yasgrid had. Compassion wasn’t going to destroy her. Compassion was part of the foundation of who she was. Denying that would mean denying herself, and that would destroy the part of her that mattered most.
I don’t think you’ve had a chance to live yet, so its too soon for you to die, she told the Trouble, knowing that some lives were terribly brief, but no less worthy of being cherished.
Life is hurts. There is no place beyond the pain. It can only be shared and spread, that is all I can do.
No, Nia said, a gentle wind blowing through her soul and fanning the flames she was engulfed by. There is pain, and misery, and unending rage, but there is so much more beyond that too.
Not for me, the Trouble whispered back, I exist for only one purpose. I was born to make others craved death. I am horror and fear and sorrow.
You can be more than that, Nia said, memories of Yasgrid’s words and feelings filling her almost to bursting. We can be more than that.
How? I cannot change what I am. It is all that I have tried since I was born.
Sometimes our problems are too big for us to handle on our own, Nia said, warmth filling her as she confirmed the decision she’d made to seek her mother’s help.
I have no one to help me.
You had no one. Now you have me.
Why? Why would you help me?
Because you can’t be judged by what others made of you, and everyone deserves a chance to choose who they’re going to be.
Side B – Yasgrid
Some journeys are easy, simple treks down well walked roads with few challenges awaiting before the destination is reached. Others are arduous voyages across hostile terrains where perils lurk ready to spring at every moment.
Yasgrid would have rejoiced at either of those possibilities but instead she got the third sort of journey. The doomed sort.
She knew her unspoken decision to lead the others to the edge of the Darkwood and send them scampering off to safety was doomed less than a day into their travels. By the second day of their walking it became clear that the others understood her plan and were quietly humoring her until she changed her mind. It was three days into the trip however before she allowed herself to admit any of that.
What finally convinced her that they were never going to reach the edge of the Darkwood, or at least never reach it so long as she kept the intention of sendings the others away from it in her heart, was when it became clear that the Darkwood itself was working to thwart her efforts.
She and the wood had what Yasgrid considered to be an evolving relationship. On the one hand, the Darkwood hated the mere fact of her existence and considered her an abomination of the highest order, largely because from a certain point of view she was. She’d violated the natural order by bringing the dead back to life, unmade Troubles which were an intrinsic part of the Darkwood’s psychic ecosystem, and fundamentally altered one of the divine powers who called the Darkwood home.
Also, she’d explicitly promised to change the essential nature the Darkwood was built upon.
That the Darkwood found all of that a trifle worrisome was perfectly reasonable in Yasgrid’s view.
Despite that however, the Darkwood’s relationship to Yasgrid had grown more complex over time.
Yasgrid had demonstrated she meant the wood no direct harm, she’d shown that she could move through it peaceable, and she’d proven that the transformation she offered was one given as a choice rather than inflicted as an act of singular will.
At first Yasgrid had thought the Darkwood was impeding their progress as a backslide into a distrust of her motives or overall worth. When the paths which looped them around turned out to also being confounding the Fate Dancers who pursued them though Yasgrid had been forced to reevaluate her assumptions.
The Darkwood could have been trying to protect or hang onto Ilia, the Gardener, and Lem, but in the places they arrived to bed down there were also four pleasant spots and the food they encountered was always sufficient to feed her entire party, herself included.
Even her diminishing attempts to lose her companions were stymied before she could get away from them, which would have been an odd choice for a geological entity who was opposed to Yasgrid’s influence on her companions.
Little by little Yasgrid began to ask herself the most obvious of questions; was the Darkwood trying to be her friend?