One Foot Before The Other

[Ruby]

Part Three - The End

The carriage rattled away from the City of Bards in silence. Atop the oak structure sat a withered man servant, eternally regretting the day he accepted a job offer from one Leopold Winchester. In the comfort of the carriage sat Ruby Winchester, dressed to kill and legs crossed to support a leather bound tome on the dramaturgical history of Scara Brae.

Two days before her departure, she handed over governance of the Restless Fugitive’s newest play to a young and all too eager Pettigrew Jones. Ruby, Duffy, and Arden had gone through the script penned by the youth with a fine tooth comb. Their errors, hopefully taken on board, would deliver the play and its cast to opening night in three night’s time.

Ruby Winchester’s work in Branna, as far as she was concerned, was done.

All the same she missed it already. As she watched the privet white fenced houses pass her by, a sense of belonging pulled at the threads of her dress. Despite Duffy’s protestations something grand awaited her in the next chapter of her life, she had lived in the stage’s limelight too long to disregard it quite so easily.

“We were born to the stage,” she said, repeating an earlier conversation that had torn her heart atwain. “We die to it…”

She continued with her book. When she returned to Scara Brae she hoped to pave the way for debut performances of Lucian’s Call and, at Queen Valeena’s behest – I Want to Be Your Canary.

[Ruby]

Debut was not the right word. Now she thought about it, life was simply repeating itself. Cycling through the trivialities of her existence, the red-headed spell singer thought it ironic that now she was ‘the Great Bard’. Nobody else in Scara Brae knew the trappings of dramaturgy quite as well as she.

“It would be so easy,” she began, “to claim the light for my own.”

She could dominate plays for years, perhaps centuries, and there would be nobody to stand in her way. Arden had pledged his sword to the peace between the continents, preferring war to peace. Lillith, fresh returned from the war with the Greater Oni vowed to rest. It was the first time in a decade the spirit warder was able to consider such a possibility – a respite, something achievable.

“But no.” She turned the page. “The mantle is passed.”

She pictured Pettigrew and Liasa in her head. His mucky face. Her crow like, but resplendent youth a tour de force of charisma that surpassed even the Tantalum’s hay day. She smirked. Few things in life could claim to make the Crimson Mistress jealous. Ironic, she thought to herself, that the prime suspect on that list would be her understudy.

“We part ways.”

The words burnt. She had been trying not to say them for the better part of a year. Since Duffy’s death, Ruby had tried to cling on to the memories of the past. Now, descending the spiral highway back to reality…she cried freely.

[Ruby]

The igam ogam spires of Branna’s residential districts reminded the spell singer of home. Ivy and brambles covered fronts and lawns, nature oblivious in its blossom weaving merriment to the needs of man. Children ran up and down the streets, frolicking in the last few precious minutes of daylight. Parents clucked on doorsteps, daring their offspring to break their curfews one more time.

A bump in the road jolted Ruby from her daydream. She wiped the tears from her eyes with the hem of her sleeve and peered at the carriage window to see if she had smudged her make-up. Satisfied, she sat upright, and weighed her emotions.

“Goodbye.”

The word sounded hollow. She did not believe she had said it. She swallowed the lump in her throat, a lump dry and remorseful and bitter.

“Goodbye, brother.”

The tears began to flow again. Rocking back and forth, the read headed matriarch let her emotions flow. She could not cling to hatred anymore. She could not hope to hear Duffy explain this death away. There was no going back. There was no plan to revive, revitalise, and rejuvenate. As she trailed down the cliff face through the suburbs of Duffy’s opus, she let go.

“Wilfred!” she roared. She banged on the roof with her fist.

The carriage stopped on the last band. Ahead, the road petered out onto a bridge to nowhere – a portal that would send the carriage hurtling out of the Tap and into the darkened streets of Radasanth.

[Ruby]

Ruby emerged from the wagon like a grieving widow. Her makeup, a long forgotten promise to long resplendent was smudged and her eyeliner was halfway down her cheek. Her heels clicked as she stumbled forwards, as though running towards Branna would someone forgive her for all her sins.

Looking at it in a new light, the red headed matriarch at least realised why both Duffy had to die, truly, and she had to learn to let go the hard way. It was a beautiful sight. A tall, crooked spire dedicated to all the beautiful, creative, and forgotten people of the world. It looked like Scara Brae, furrowed tiles and white privet fences with idyllic sheen and brief hints of industry. It felt like Raiaera. A soulful awakening to music.

“I’ll miss you…,” she whispered. Her voice was hoarse, weaker than it had been for months – that told her, and all who would cross her paths in the years to come that Duffy Bracken’s life had changed her.

Time would tell if that change was for the better. She watched the sun set over the Aerie, the flurry of tower’s at Branna’s peak where the stages basked in sunlight until darkness fell and she began to feel the chill. She would not return. Even when begged, she said goodbye in the last echelons of daylight and with every ounce of her being she meant it.

“Goodbye.”

She turned. She climbed into the carriage. She banged on the roof, and was gone.

[Rayleigh]

Thread: One Foot Before the Other
Participants: Duffy & Ruby
Type: No Judgment

Congratulations!

Duffy receives:
2,150 EXP
140 GP

Ruby receives:
1,020 EXP
90 GP

[Rayleigh]

All EXP and GP have been added!