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.