Lady in Waiting is a flash folk-horror told through prayers. Each episode is just minutes long. This is an immersive audio drama. So, turn your volume up. A supplement to the audio drama The Thief.

Listen on Apple, Patreon (totally free), Spotify, or subscribe to the newsletter.

Previously, having fled the cyngdón days ago with stolen papers and now malnourished and exposed on the long road east, the lady-in-waiting is giving-up to magical thinking - and hallucination.

Day Seven

Brona is tying a knot. I start to ask what-for but my tongue hurts to move; my mouth hurts to move. My own breath like plunging my chapped lips into salt. I focus on the wavering road and the wavering horizon.

Brona hears me anyway. "My mother showed me. It's a message."

What does it say?

I blink and see cloud-cover still. I shrug and still find myself wrapped in my blanket. Distantly, very distantly, it occurs to me I am still cold. Then why does the road move like that?

"It's dust," says Brona.

"Get off the road, my lady," she continues. I wince, though. My foot throbs from the threat of again getting wet. It prefers its dry ache. Instead, I limp. "My lady, the grass is dry - get off the road!"

Stop prodding, Brona, I hiss.

"My lady," she tries again. I turn on her.

Brona isn't there.

"Mm - miss?" Brona, your voice. "You there." No, no - this isn't you. I am - I am not well. "Hey!" I blink away what I think are tears. I am looking south, I think, away from the road. I --

But I am hit hard from behind and fall. Crumple, really. I almost lose my things but instead of risk them scattering and catching myself, I hug my things to me and land hard.

My forehead is on the roa d, like in prayer.

I turn my face to face the boots. Boots between me and the horizon. Through the window of these ankles I see maybe a hundred yards out a chattel of women and children at spear-point clambering to the road from the north.

There is chimney smoke, maybe, curling from that direction, and not grassland but farm.

I shift like larvae.

"Were you trying to run?"

Boots push me over.

"Ugh, look at you." He sucks his teeth. Through blur I see familiar colors on his tunic.

"This won't do," Boots de cides. I blink. I see the colors of Burhwick. A friend?

I am Gwéndhrwil's shadow. Take me home, please.

"Not anymore," Brona reminds me.

"What's that," asks Boots. He kneels. Other boots are joining him. He has a kind face, I think.

People are looking for me, and I am lost. You will be rewarded.

"He is not your friend," Brona says.

Boots squints. "I don't know what you're saying."

"I'm sorry," I started. "I - I won't run again."

Furbelow
Written and produced by Michael Schofield
Performed by Rae Witte
Introduced by Jeremy Roman
Inspired by S. Kaiya J.’s game Her Odyssey
Brona is Emily Morse-Lee
Boots is Jeremy Roman
"Arabic Middle Eastern Female Vocals" by Orchestralis

Lady in Waiting is produced by the fyrd: our hoods (patreon) and thegns (susbtack): Amz Deen, Nandi K., Kari Sutcliffe, Patrik Deraković-Rakas, Ivan Duch, Lucas Duff, Jen, Kier Hodgson, Hannah Radcliff, Jeremy Román, Charles Villard.

You can join the fyrd and help me make this stuff on patreon.com/thethief.