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I’m posting from my current writing WiP, Song and Shadow, a prequel to Song and Sword. It’s a rough draft and I still don’t have an actual outline for it so it’s going to be a fun ride.
Picking up from last week’s snippet.
“Tell me more about this traveling that he has to do.”
“It’s a tradition for the Crown Prince to travel the lands and get to know the way the world works so that he will know how to rule it. But that one.” He spit onto the cobblestones. “Maybe it’ll do him some good, but no one is holding out much hope for him.”
Pashevel frowned. “You almost make it sound like there is a way for him to fail.”
“It has happened,” he said. “But no one is ever sure what has happened to the ones that did not return, if they chose not to return or fell to some illness or met with foul play, but the law of the land is that if they do not return on their eighteenth birthday they are mourned as dead.”
“They travel alone for two years?”
The man nodded. “They leave the morning after their sixteenth birthday and must return by sundown of their eighteenth.”
“And if they do not?”
Novel Notes 
Wow, that is one tough upbringing. I hope Pashevel will go along with to guide him.
Yes, what happens if they arrive a few days later after their 18th birthday?
Nice job of introducing the hero’s journey. I’m already intrigued, Paula. :-)