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Lillia's pockets are so full of rocks that the sides of her robe are bulging out. And that's not counting the rocks she's got in the basket beside her, so heavy that she grunts when she picks it up.
"I think you have enough," Reyson calls from the other side of the dried-out creekbed, when she picks up a particularly jagged-looking one and adds it to the pile.
Lillia glances toward his own basket, little-filled as it is. "And you've got hardly any at all."
Reyson makes a noncommittal noise. Nudges his basket with his foot.
Her eyes soften, then. Which makes Reyson hunch his shoulders—it's worse when she's trying to be nice.
"You know," she says, ever the officious, know-it-all older sister, "if you only ever fed hatchlings gruel, instead of letting them try a whole bunch of things, they'd never learn what's good and what's bad to eat—"
"I know that," Reyson says.
"—and it's only one person, Reyson, and it's the only way we'll ever know what those feelings are like—"
"I know that."
"—and if we didn't do this once a year the whole forest would be in trouble—"
"I know." He hates when she talks like this. So faultlessly logical. Just telling him things that are obvious, that everyone already knows—so he never feels like he can argue back, even though he never really feels convinced, either.
She scowls. "Well then don't be a baby about it. Fill your stupid basket."
He grabs a stone from the creekbed at random, see, look, I'm doing it. Pries it from the mud and hefts it into his basket without bothering to wash the grime away.
"You'll get it when you're older," she adds in a moody mutter.
He knows that, too. Knows it because he can feel it through her, a feeling uncannily like prey drive—faint, at first, but it's been deepening by the day. He first felt it in her a year ago, when her height sprung up so much she started towering over their mother—autumn came, and that feeling came with it. Last year, by the time the solstice came, she was keening in her sleep from the feeling, and she had no relief from it until the rite was done.
When Naesala visits them from Kilvas, he always says something about how peaceful it feels, staying among them. Says Serenes is a nice break from all the thieving and fighting and bloodlust back home. And probably that's true, most the time.
But Reyson's never felt anything in Naesala's heart like what's in a heron's on the longest night of the year.
Lillia's fidgeting with the rock in her left hand, the same restless motion as a tiger kneading its paws. In the west, the sun is nearly set.
Father appears then, from above, landing between them, huge and heron-shaped.
When he untransforms, he looks at Reyson's basket with a dim eye. But at least he doesn't snipe about it. Just looks them both over and says, with grim authority, "It's time."
They bring the baskets with them to the altar. The rest of the family is already there. Mother's got little Leanne in one arm, and in her spare hand, a rock of her own.
Leanne's twin sits on the altar, alone.
Reyson stares up at her, stone in hand, and swallows. He's glad for his two little sisters. Glad because that means at least he'll get to keep the one.
Beside him, Lillia sets her lip, and she casts the first stone.