Intro to Goodbyes

It was all coming to an end. All those years of that clandestine tree house, of voices calling out in unison and an indissoluble brotherhood, all drawing to a close swiftly and steadfastly, as constant and inevitable as the drifting tides. Nothing left to do but ride out the last wave, clutching, grasping, and groping, desperately searching for driftwood to cling to in the whirlpools of closure and finality. Something to make the adventure seem worthwhile; something to pluck from the waters of their childhoods to bring with them on the oceans of their adulthoods. Would it be their days of war, their nights of magic? The pirate ships, the kings’ castles, the wizards’ lairs or the wolves’ dens? Or perhaps they would choose the blood and the tears and the sweat that had spilled from their pores and down their skins to penetrate the earth and create the life around them, building up and up and up until the very essence of the place was essentially theirs and theirs alone. Would it be the rivalries and friendships, the puberties and sex drives? The First Girlfriends and the Love-At-First-Sights and the hatreds and confrontations, the broken bones and sleepovers and late-night study sessions? Which would they choose; which memory from which epoch of their lives would they carry with them in their pockets? Which remembrance would find everlasting life in the minds of they who would leave this place?