Have you decided yet?” Brendly Tuck asked his best friend. They had known each other all seventeen summers of their lives. Brendly hoped that since he didn’t have the option of getting out of Prominence Valley as March Weston did, that his best friend would decide not to leave. It was a small hope though, because Brendly couldn’t remember March ever talking about anything else. March was always asking him things like, “Where should I go?” Or “What should I try to become? Should I go downriver to Camberly? What about up North to the borders? Maybe I could hire on as a guardsman, or maybe go down South to the coast and work a ship?” Brendly loved his friend dearly, but as the finality of their last summer together grew closer, the gnawing sense of loss, and feelings that bordered on jealousy, were growing inside of him. If March kept rubbing it in, Brendly thought that he might just have to give his best friend a good ole thumping to take with him when he left. Wondering now why he had asked the question, Brendly stopped on the woodsy game trail that they were traveling and waited for the answer that he didn’t really want to hear.
