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Part Five – Leaving Granite Reach.

Working in theatre is not like other work. It is physically demanding, and requires a high level of precision and dedication. In those ways, it is like a lot of other professions. I have worked enough odd jobs to learn something, but theatre work is...unreal. It is the artifice of telling beautiful lies, and telling the truth while doing so. It transformed me utterly. Only two months passed while I was with that little company, but my life path became engraved into my heart. It is said that one cannot serve two masters, and for many weeks I struggled with the question of whether or not to give up my westward quest in search of Warden training at Mt Ruthane, or to stay with the troupe and turn south.

In the end I kept my promise to myself and to my family, that I would train with the Sirrus monks. It was a teary farewell from the troupe, a long and difficult goodbye, with many of my khumos friends hugging me over and again, forcing promises from me that I could never keep. It was agony, to leave such friends behind, and this is not the place to name them one by one and recall their faces, but I still keep every single memento they gave me, and I sometimes still sing their favourite songs to myself on lonely nights upon the trail.

There were many lonely nights after I left the troupe, and The Road to Ruthane is a song I will never forget.

Why did I leave my friends behind

and take the mountain road

why did I say goodbye again

and bear this heavy load

This lonely path shall take me

beyond the well-trod way

this howling wind shall shake me

both night and freezing day

The Ro-oad to Ruthane

Will take you far from home

The Ro-oad to Ruthane

You'll travel all alone

The harrow and the hailing stones

cut rock and tree and beast

the path is sixty days by foot

from west unto the east

The path is marked by circle stones

the signals of the past

the broken signs of long forgotten

days that didn't last

The Ro-oad to Ruthane

Will take you far from home

The Ro-oad to Ruthane

You'll travel all alone

The Sirrus towers lordly rise

above the canyon cut

The castles of the last of Kings

against the world are shut

The monks of Mount Ruthane they sing

of caves that run so deep

into the stone armour'ed earth

and mysteries they keep.

The Ro-oad to Ruthane

Will take you far from home

The Ro-oad to Ruthane

You'll travel all alone

Why did I leave my friends behind

and take the mountain road

why did I say goodbye again

and bear this heavy load

This lonely path shall take me

beyond the well trod way

this howling wind shall shake me

both night and freezing day

Yet, as lonely as the road was, and as hungry as I got between meals, Mount Ruthane was where I was to meet the person that would mark me with her destiny, and plant my feet on the nomad's path forever.

The love of my life - Ieya Tree-Top, of the Ruah Valley Eesheeya.

Ta
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