Fen was quiet for a moment.
"When do you need an answer?" she asked.
"I'm here for two more days," Elara said. "Before I leave."
Fen nodded once.
Elara stood and went to find Venn to tell her she would be taking all three candidates back to the capital, and also that she had a significant number of questions about the program's funding structure and intake pipeline that she wanted to address before she left, because the program was good and good things required sustained attention or they stopped being good.
Behind her, at the edge of the training yard, Fen stood and watched the current cohort run their coordination drill, and for the first time in four months, she was thinking about something other than what she was waiting for.
She was thinking about what came next.
The two days at the training post passed quickly, which was what happened when Elara found something worth paying attention to.
