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.