For DD, for being my Muse

Gabriel was, as usual, talking Yrred's ear off as they sat in the quad and waited for Les and Lia to call them for their part of the scene.

"It's a brilliant opportunity, you know? To work with such talented people! I mean, Nac, watching you and acting with you has taught me so much, and I am so grateful for everything. I really do think I'm only making Les and Lia happy because you're so awesome. It's also great to get to act with Haqir, you know? I don't know how he's managing everything, directing another play at the same time."

Yrred nodded, half listening, half watching as Darcy tried to look awake beside Lia in the grass. "It's Haq – he's a theatre giant. None of us should be surprised."

"But how dedicated you have to be! Does he sleep?"

"No."

"Does he eat?"

"Probably not."

"Does he have any time to, you know, go out on dates or study?"

"Definitely not."

"What a man! What a prince! What a king of the theatre! If only I could be like him."

"Oh, please," Yrred snapped, finally turning his full attention to Gabriel's glowing face, "no one wants to have the theatre consume them. It chews you up, destroys you, and spits you out in so many pieces you can never find yourself again. And when you finally burn out – and we all do, sooner or later – then what do you do with your life? Acting doesn't give you any skills beyond the stage and when you get there, and somehow without you being aware of it theatre becomes a parasite that leaches life from you instead of giving it, you have nothing. Don't aspire to be a theatre man, Gabriel. It isn't what you want."

"But think of the glory, Nac!"

"What good is glory when you're some dissolute, starving artist, old before your time and bitter about the world?"

"It's all you have left, when that happens, Nac. That's what glory's good for – to be what you have left to cling to. That's the message of this play, or one of them." Les was leaning against the railing beside them, smiling a little sadly, and twirling her pencil in her slender fingers. "But right now, we need to deal with one of the other messages of the play: it's not just our parents than make us who we are."

Yrred pulled himself from the ground with a melodramatic groan. "Oh, yes, let's see how Gloucester fails today. What joy!"

Gabriel had bounded to his feet and was rummaging in his bag for a pencil of his own. Yrred ignored him and stalked toward the makeshift stage, script clutched in one hand and the other brushing his hair from his eyes.

Darcy watched him go with something akin to sympathy. He knew his own acidic tongue was the result of feeling somewhat alone, and, from Yrred's latest speech, it seemed the young man knew something of loneliness himself.

Les returned to sit beside Lia on their blanket, and rehearsal resumed. Darcy was stunned by the raw talent Gabriel exhibited, taking direction and turning it into flawless action, really embodying the character that the two director's forced upon him. Les and Lia surprised him as well. They were sure and capable, Lia forcefully demanding more from all three actors, guiding them skillfully to greater brilliance, Les quietly urging them to think and bring their own experiences to the characters. Haqir Kas, who played Yrred's bastard soon Edmund, was something else altogether. He flowed and whispered and intrigued and yelled and brought so many conflicting emotions to the stage that Darcy got quite lost watching him.

But it was Yrred who surprised Darcy the most. He seemed to be the rock at the centre of the scene by nature of his ability and his imposing presence, but Les and Lia were both furiously writing in their notebooks and all of their notes were, it seemed, for him.

"Be unstable!" Lia demanded.

"Your son just told you that your other son is plotting against you – how does that make you feel?" Les cajoled.

"Cheat out and for heavens' sake stop with the anger." Lia fumed.

"Or at least make it impotent anger, deflated, like you think this is your failure, and you're angry at yourself," Les amended.

It went on, and on, and Yrred took it all but gave back less and less until finally Les stopped the scene in the middle and called for a fifteen-minute break.

"What's gotten into him, do you think?" she sighed. "He's so brilliant, but he's just…his heart's not in it and I don't know why."

"Well, he hates Gloucester, for one thing," Lia remarked.

"But I really think it's more than that. I mean, it's not as if we've typecast him. Nac plays all these strong characters, these moral characters, these grandfatherly, thoughtful characters – even the mad King last fall was regal and commanding. This is supposed to be a challenge! To be weak and pathetic and still have people love him; this is something new and exciting and I don't know why he's so unhappy with it. It has to be something else."

"Maybe we haven't explained it properly to him?"

"I'm running out of ways, Lia, really I am. I think it's an underlying SOMETHING, and I wish I knew what it was."

"I do, too," Lia whispered, reaching out her arms for a hug, "I do, too. For now, can we talk Haq? I'm worried that we aren't going to have enough time to rehearse with him and Goneril. He's not seductive enough right now, and I think those scenes will help him bring some of that into the rest of the play."

"You're right, actually; I've been noticing that, too. Thankfully Haq is good with the subtle things, or else we'd never be able to get Edmund off the ground. I'll make sure we book extra rehearsal time for that scene – Tuesday, do you think? And while we're there we can get him to do his opening monologue as well."

"Tuesday is when we're doing fight choreography with him and Gabriel, so it's perfect – he'll be able to blend everything."

"Brilliant."

Darcy listened to this exchange with wonderment. Was his intuition about Yrred correct – could the man be suffering some kind of torment that was affecting his acting? And, if so, could it be that, this time, he had been called from his life beyond the pages to be a friend, a confidante, someone who knew what bitterness was and had found what cured it? He thought it might just be, and, taking his leave of the women, began to walk toward the clump where Gabriel was once more holding forth on the magic of the theatre, as Yrred and Haq pored over their scripts.

He arrived as Les and Lia called out a scene number, and Gabriel bounded and Haq walked to the stage, leaving Yrred storming inwardly as Darcy sat in the grass beside him.