Julie and Cassie got out their backgammon set, and opened a bottle of red wine and some chips.They hadn't played for months.They played hard, taking t...e game of chance very seriously, but whenever their hands touched as they reached for the dice, they found them lingering.The tension between them was palpable.They both knew where this day was leading.But there was no hurry.When the bottle of wine disappeared, and a draw declared, Cassie pulled Julie up from her chair, and held her close,. " I sat. She sat, too, lounging back in my arms.She laid her head back against my chest. "Okay, so we're very good friends now. You can talk to me. What's the deal with Stoney and girls?" There's no deal, sweet lady," I said. "I've had girlfriends. Don't have any right now, present company excepted. Haven't really had a girlfriend since - oh, in the last few years. Friends who happen to be female, yes. Official girlfriends, no. Nobody applied for the position." I did." Yes, you did. A very. She went home but before she did she kissed his cheek and then asked him about going to that reunion. “Sure…sure I’ll go,” he told her. “In fact we could go together. But you’ll probably stay at your mothers, right?” “I don’t know but most likely,” she told him. “Hey, I have an idea,” he told her. “If you want to we could go and get crazy up there when we get there. I don’t mean “crazy” crazy but we could uhhhhhh just get together and play around. I’ll be getting myself a hotel room. At some. "I want to stay camped here tonight." Why? That's madness!" The Maurial forces don't know where we are. They won't have heard of the Sersiphi uprising. If anything, they'll be expecting us to be on the road headed directly to their kingdom. We'll be safe from them here." But even if they don't attack us, they're marching north, into the Queen's lands. We either need to engage them or start recruiting more soldiers and planning where we'll take our stand against them. Either way, we can't stay.