The cool spring breeze ruffled my trio’s hair as we sat quietly in the long grass. A bottle passed between our hands, pressed against our lips as the burn of cheap liquor spilled down our throats.

“Feels like the beginning of something, huh?”

Lori was my oldest friend, a constant presence on my street. Our mothers had shared meals and stories and, when times had once been particularly tight, coins. I hated to admit it, but there was a touch of bitterness fringing my thoughts that night. She was confident, passionate and a convincing talker all at once. I had absolutely no doubts that Lori would get at least one, if not a handful of apprenticeship offers.

“And the end of something else.”

To me it did feel like an ending. Not of childhood, exactly, but of uncertainty. Tomorrow I would either accept an apprenticeship or I would need to take on a job, most likely as a manual labourer or, if I was very fortunate, as a maidservant or a similar household role. The difference between apprenticeships and a standard job was not the pay, but in the training and the opportunities to rise.

One of my interviews that very morning had been with a chef. As an apprentice chef I would learn from my master, rising when he did and sleeping in a corner when the job was done for the night. I would prepare dishes at his direction, simple tasks at first but entrusted with greater ones as my skill improved.

I could have sought a job in the kitchen at sixteen. A dishwasher, perhaps, with hands lined with water and fingers cracked from scrubbing. Reliable, hardworking, but a dishwasher nonetheless. It was the difference between being a girl who could mend a hole or hem a pair of trousers with a few clever stitches, and a skilled seamstress.

Apprenticeships meant you could rise and that was everything to me.

Andrew nodded slowly at my words, the alcohol dulling his mind and softening his tongue.

“I’ll be out on the streets tomorrow if I don’t make apprentice. My da says so.”

There wasn’t much we could say to that. Our eyes were sympathetic and mine and Lori’s hearts were aching for Andrew, but pity would not go down well.

“You think you have a decent chance?” Lori asked.

He shrugged. “I’m young, I’m healthy, and I’m not a complete idiot.” We shared a laugh into the night air. “The military should take me if nothing else.”

“Dangerous though,” I commented.

The military hadn’t made my shortlist. Despite the time that had passed since the Five Years War I’d rather spend a lifetime scrubbing pots than be shot full of arrows like a pincushion.

“Better than starving on the streets. Maybe I could make officer someday, get my own horse or something.” Andrew brandished the bottle like a sabre, splashing drops in an arc.

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“Oi, careful!” Lori dabbed the errant drops off her face with a homespun sleeve. “Officer Andrew, my arse.”

“Your arse doesn’t deserve the great and noble name of Andrew!”

The bottle went around again and I drank deeply. My hair spilled out against the grass as I lay back, looking into the wide and open night sky. It felt like being on the edge of something, as though I was about to fall over a precipice and my life would choose a course. I imagined myself a stone tumbling down a mountain, choosing a groove to follow, gathering speed and thundering down until it was too late to change track.

The stars spun and danced between us.

“Guys?”

My two friends answered me with grunts.

“I did another interview today.”

“Wasn’t your last one yesterday? Bow making? Or something?” Andrew perked up, peering at me with eyes heavily lidded with drink.

“It was going to be,” I mumbled, feeling as though I was confessing a secret. Even though it wasn’t anything of the sort. “I wanted a safety net.”

“Cool, maybe we’ll end up in the military together. Cadets Andrew and Anya, soon to be officers!” The bottle was brandished again, drained of its contents.

Lori rolled over to face me, eyes narrowed. She knew me well enough to know I’d never put down military, never want my mother to watch me train to kill and walk away on deployment, leaving her to wonder whether I was going to walk back in. Except, in a manner, that was what I might have applied for.

“No, not military.” I sighed. “Runner. I applied to be a runner of Westal. The wings.” I started to laugh, in the way only the truly young and the mildly drunk can laugh. It spilled out past my lips until I had to sit up, propped up by shaky elbows. “I interviewed to be a wing of the kingdom, a courier of sacred commands, a trusted messenger blessed by the Lord himself.”

My friends were quiet whilst I laughed like a loon. Perhaps they thought me half mad. Then Andrew, with characteristic bluntness, but not unkindness, spoke.

“Don’t you have to be able to … run? Have you run a day in your life?”

Lori started to laugh too. “We ran from Isa once after we swiped a handful of sweets she’d left out for her grandson. Anya fell flat on her face and we had to apologise!”

I pointed a finger at her in mock outrage. “You left me! I had to apologise. You scarfed half the sweets then puked behind the old shed.”

“Exactly!”

“Well she didn’t ask me to run! I brought linen trousers and everything, but it was just talking.” I chewed my lip thoughtfully.

“Probably because she took one look at you and decided not to bother!” Andrew hooted, gesturing at me. “Short legs and like a hibernating bear.”

“Is that a weight or temperament crack?” Lori squinted at Andrew, poised to leap to my defence. I was on the verge of feeling like making a declaration of friendship when she ruined it. “Both?”

That set us off again, snickering into the night at the absurdity of the idea. It was true and I took no serious offence – I was not built like the runners I had seen around the city. They were long legged, slender and a touch wild looking. Like once they started they didn’t know how to stop going, always moving and restless.

We stumbled home on ungainly legs. As we drew into our streets, Andrew seemed to shrug off drunkenness like a cloak, growing more serious as we neared. We paused not far off, Lori and I leaning against each other for support. Whispers of luck passed between us and we promised to meet up the following day to share our news. I pressed a kiss to his cheek as he turned away, the stubble scratchy under my lips.

“Do you really think his da will send him out on the streets?” Lori murmured a few streets down.

“Honestly, I don’t know.” I paused, the question lying heavy between us. “I think my mother would take him in. She has a good heart.”

“That she does,” Lori agreed.

As I crawled into bed – nowhere near as quietly as I might have thought I was being – the beginning of a headache began to crowd in at my temples. I didn’t have the heart to regret it. Tomorrow my apprenticeship offers would change everything.